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For the last three days we've had mystery phone calls shortly after 6pm, each day they hang up after I answer the phone — a sure sign of a call-centre, the auto-dialler has dialled, you've answered, but all of their operators are busy and nobody is free to piss you off. Until today...

All heavily accented, echo-ey and garbled, sounding typically like the Indian call-centres. Around 6:10pm this evening:

Scam man: "Is that Mr ....? Hello? Hello? I am calling from Globalmax ??? IT a Microsoft partner"

Me: "Hello? Hello? You're very garbled, hello?"

Scam man: "Do you have a PC or laptop computer"

Me: "yep, sure do sunshine"

Scam man: "There are reports of widespread computer problems in your area"

Me: "I'll bet there are". At this point I start chuckling to myself, this is no ordinary call-centre trying to sell me carpet cleaning or life insurance, this is a real honest-to-goodness rip-me-off scammer.

Scam man: "are you sitting at your computer?"

Me: "Why it just so happens I am."

Scam man: "can you open the desktop?"

Me: "Easy, there."

Scam man: "Do you know how to do a run command"

At this point I couldn't be bothered playing any more and asked him "do you know how to run a linux computer?"

Scam man: "oh, ah, you are running the linux operating system, I will put you through to our Microsoft Linux support engineer, can you please hold"

...a long pause...

Scam man: "are you there?"

Me: "Yes, I'm waiting..."

...another long pause...

Scam man #2: "Hello, no linux". CLICK

Aw, such a pity. What a shame I didn't have the time and the setup to play along a little longer. A few minutes digging found mentions on Whirlpool — http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1057308&p=5 — and a reference back to http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/supportonclick-systemrecure-scam.

So take care out there if "Global Max" or "Max global" or "SecureMyPC" or any other cold-caller tries to take over your PC or credit card.

Updates

[2010-07-01 Thu] the scam is now so prevalent its even made it to the local newspaper — http://www.theage.com.au/technology/security/pay-up-or-your-pcs-toast-20100630-zm8i.html

Only a week or so since we were at Lorne and read in one of the newspapers an article about the millions and millions of dollars that Australians lose each year to various scams, then today we got to experience one first hand! Not just that, but it was almost word-for-word as laid out in the newspaper. Supposed tradesmen offering goods and services “on the cheap,”

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