Thanks for the post. It is to the letter of what happened to my elderly parents. They gave no credit card or banking info but completely lost everything on their computer, drivers and all. It was taken over by remote desktop and they lost everything. I live out of town and told them to immediately go to my sister's house next door and log in to all their accounts and change their passwords. They called their bank to place an alert as well as ebay and paypal. Just hope they acted soon enough. Scary!
Got a call from this number on our home line, as above, stating she was from Windows & wanted me to access my computer & walk me through the problems I had. Very thick Indian accent, & when I asked her where she was calling from she stated Sydney. My telephone listed the number as overseas. She said I could call (02) 80147207 to verify the truth. I will be reporting this to Telstra. She sounded very suspicious so I did not pursue her request. Grrrrrrrr!
The exact same thing just happened to me that other writers have reported. Thick Indian accent, told me my computer was sending information to them that it had a virus, and was being slowly destroyed. Then the caller told me to log onto my computer, access the internet, and access a specific address. Thankfully, I was suspicious, and asked for verification that they were legit. I was told that I had to go through the internet to do that. I asked enough questions that they hung up on me. I did an internet search immediately and found this webpage. The number was listed simply as "unlisted," so I have know idea from where they were calling. Another red flag: They thought I was using a laptop, but I own a desktop, and also assumed I use Windows, but I have a Mac.
When I answered they asked for Mrs Samuel Caruso, we've been getting a lot of collection calls for this person for the past couple months so I knew right away that it wasn't a legit call. As soon as he mentioned Microsoft windows in his heavy indian accent I knew just which scam it was. So I decided to have some fun and waste their time. I played dumb, acted like I didn't know what a start menu was, pretended I was following his instructions and when he was asking what I saw I kept telling him "a cow a chicken and a goat"
(I was playing farmville). He was VERY confused. After about 20 minutes of this I finally let him know that I wasn't falling for his scam and he was pissed. He cursed at me and hung up. I'm hoping I wasted enough of their time that they won't bother to call me back.
Answered the phone to find presumably an Indian caller. Said they wanted to help me fix my computer because they were receiving messages that it was full of unwanted "junk". Asked for his credentials. Only "credential" he had was that he was calling from Windows. Asked for supervisor and started to give me directions for a website and phone number. Anyone that is tasked with calling such a large group like people who have problems with windows (which is EVERYBODY!!) will have a direct superior with them or monitoring the call. And why would Microsoft spend money to fix Windows? They would just make Windows 9 or whatever number they're on now and have everyone buy that!
In addition, I check this website on all unknown callers before answering. So should you!