There is a scam where you will receive a call to fix your non existent PC problem. Just hang up and never give out details over the phone to someone you don’t know.
If you have time on your hands and want to annoy the scammers you could folow this example from one that I pick up off Boards.ie
“First there was music. Then a heavily accented voice from a call centre in India. This minion’s job was to get me to turn on my PC so they could achieve something. So, three mistakes there:
1. I don’t have a PC that I use for anything except specialist purposes
2. This was a silent call, music notwithstanding. If they had been a UK company this would have been illegal
3. I am not the idiot they think I am
So I told the very nice and heavily accented gentleman that my PC takes ten minutes to boot. And that I would put him on hold. I explained he would hear music.
Then I turned the radio on and put the handset by the radio.
After 5 minutes I apologised that it would be another five minutes. He was still on the line!
After ten minutes I apologised that the machine had just crashed, and that it would be another ten minutes. He was still on the line!
After 20 minutes I told him that the machine had booted successfully!
Not only was he still on the line, he put me on hold then so I could speak to his supervisor. I decided to hold.
A much less accented lady came onto the line and asked me to look at my keyboard, so I did.
She told me where the Alt key was. Interestingly it is there! Bottom left hand side. Oh joy. Next to that she told me was the Windows key.
Ah yes, the windows key. That is very hard to find on a Mac. I explained that I couldn’t see it.
She asked me to look at the bottom left hand corner of the screen and told me that there was a little button marked “Start”. I told her there wasn’t. What I have is “Finder’, which has a smiley face.
When she asked what was there I told her that I had a smiley face. I believe in letting cold calling idiots hang themselves.
Instructed to click the smiley face, I did. She didn’t believe me when I told her that a list of files opened.
At that point she got a bit upset and accused me of not having turned my PC on. I was waiting for the old customer service joke of being told to take the machine back to the store and to ask for a refund because I’m too stupid to own one!
Instead she actually decided to hang up!
Go me!
Another glorious way to annoy an unethical telesales company!
The thing about this lot is that I really can’t see where the scam is. I suppose at some point they ask for payment for whatever it is they pretend they can do to your PC. Unless, of course, they deploy some sort of Trojan onto it and create some form of unpleasant botnet.
Whatever it is I don’t want it.
This call is just like those guys who turn up in an old Ford Transit with a load old asphalt on the back and ask if you want your drive resurfaced, and then rip you off rotten by doing a bad job. You do not give access to your PC with your personal data, your bank details, on it to any old Tom, Dick or Harry. Instead you take up references.
I went to their web site at onlinepccare.com (and no, I will not dignify it with a link!):
Look! Top right. The satisfaction rating.
Of every 100 people, seven are dissatisfied! That’s pretty poor!
No, that’s awful!
That’s apart from the silent call, and telling me that I had been contacted because I filled out a form when I bought my PC!
Scam artists!
Oh yes. Total call time was 24 minutes 51 seconds. I think that’s a new record!”
