Indian callers

DitzyPoo92

For the past 2 years every second day, I've been getting calls off this number - 800806807. Anyone else been getting mad calls from number like this? Answered a few times, they spouted off the usual "your PC has a virus. It's at risk blah blah...". I tell them I don't have a computer, they hang up immediately and STILL call back. I just don't answer anymore. Where do they get out numbers from? Any of you ever got any other mad callers? Ridiculous haha

SEPT 23 1989

keep them on the line waste their time and hang up

Class number, the first part looks like BOOB.

Gatling

Don't happen to be a UPC customer too ,

We get this weekly since joining UPC 2 year's ago

They always know your name

biko

Yeah there is a long thread here in AH somewhere and another long one in Computers about these scammers.

Sigourney

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Class number, the first part looks like BOOB.

Upside-down: 'LOBGOBOOB'

Savoir.Faire

Threaten them with another 100 years of colonialism if they don't stop their low-level fraudulent malarkey.

Sigourney

Sigourney wrote: »

'LOBGOBOOB'

That's not as sexy.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Gatling wrote: »

Don't happen to be a UPC customer too ,

We get this weekly since joining UPC 2 year's ago

They always know your name

I'm not with upc and got these regularly - knew my name too. I started playing along, took 5 minutes to pretend to boot up computer, watched TV, kept apologising for keeping them, was very unsure of the instructions he gave and had to repeat them several times, agreed to pay for a fix, couldn't find my credit card, kept getting number wrong......they hung up and never called again.

Shenshen

What, the ones who always offer to clean... no, sorry, fix your windows?

The first few times they called I found it funny - we've a good few computers round the house, but they all run MacOs or various Linux OS (Ubuntu, mainly), so I tried to chat with them about how and why they think they would need to fix any of them.

But by now it's just annoying, really.

Wabbit Ears

Seriously OP, This is really really really well documented on the interwebs

MadsL

Hello, are you satisfied with your internet providings?

krudler

just tell them you have a mac, or keep them on the line for ages pretending to look through a laptop and asking them stupid questions and they'll stop ringing.

krudler

MadsL wrote: »

Hello, are you satisfied with your internet providings?

It's faster than the other providings and you get a free ringding

Banjo String

Cowboys call me all the time too.

Eircom asking me to come back.

dd972

No wonder India's in dire poverty, if they got off the phone for 5 minutes maybe they'd sort it out !

danniemcq

My ma gets them all the time, well she used to till she gave the phone to her nephew (2 and a half) and let him chat away.

They tried it on me once and i just acted dumb not seeing what they were telling etc, had them on the phone for ages and me not even near the computer

Elmer Blooker

I got a call about an hour ago, the guy sounded Indian but he was ringing from somewhere in Germany as the code displayed was 0049.

SpaceTime

The caller ID is fake and it's a long running scam.

Just hang up and if they ring again just keep hanging up.

It's nothing to do with what phone provider you have. They are just pulling data from the phone book by the looks of it.

Check with your provider that you're completely ex-directory or try looking up yourself on www.eircomphonebook.ie to check.

Ray Palmer

SpaceTime wrote: »

The caller ID is fake and it's a long running scam.

Just hang up and if they ring again just keep hanging up.

It's nothing to do with what phone provider you have. They are just pulling data from the phone book by the looks of it.

Check with your provider that you're completely ex-directory or try looking up yourself on www.eircomphonebook.ie to check.

They don't use the phone book. They use random number generators being ex-directory makes no difference. Used to do market research and ex-directory people would flip out and go on about how we could not possibly generated their number randomly. Somehow being ex-directory make phone numbers magical.

I got these calls and they hung up quickly when they realised I wasn't falling for it. I hadn't even got to my devious time wasting and they copped.

I Heart Internet

I usually ask them if they can help me reboot my floppy bellend and they eventually give up.

Nemeses

I Heart Internet wrote: »

I usually ask them if they can help me reboot my floppy bellend and they eventually give up.

I hate it when you have to reboot the floppy bellend!

Do you have a 5 1/4 or a 3 1/2 model?

jimmyneo1

Keep them on the line and tell them to walk you though the process on your PC while he does the same, then send them through to this page.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6161691.stm

Santa Cruz

Ask them are they Apache Indians or Commanche Indians? "White man have heap big ghost machine"

gramar

The funniest one I got was from an emboridery company in Indonesia. I asked them why on earth I'd get clothes embroidered in Indonesia and he answered me that it wasn't embroidery services he was offering but a chance to invest in this new embroidery technology. I told him he was off his rocker and wished him good luck.

Another one I get quite often is from Hong Kong or Japan every couple of weeks. It's always a woman with an affected American accent offering an investment opportunity in some fund or other. They are really over the top 'Hello Sir, It's a pleasure to speak to you sir, I hope you're having a great day etc etc' then they go into this whole investment spiel.
It's always at work and probably because my name appears as a company contact on some internet pages. They seem to mistakenly think I have money or something.

I Heart Internet

Nemeses wrote: »

I hate it when you have to reboot the floppy bellend!

Do you have a 5 1/4 or a 3 1/2 model?

12.5" special edition model. Very hard to get parts for - but still doing the job.

131spanner

Yeah they rang us claiming to be from Microsoft. Kept them going for a good 20 minutes before dropping the phone. They rang back again at 4 the following morning and the auld lad told them politely to fúck off.

Diemos

I had great fun with these guys in my parents place on Saturday morning, kept them on the phone for well over half an hour while they investigated the "problem". After half an hour; my "laptop" was very old, took a long time to boot you see, and it crashed two or three times while booting , good job he rang when he did this laptop had serious issues, he was my hero he asked me to click on the windows button, at which point I became very confused my laptop is a Mac and has never had a windows button that I remembered....maybe one of the young ones deleted it, feckers the lot of them that's when he tried to end the call. I managed another minute or two but you have to help me, you told me it was the huffalump virus! before he hung up on the big thick paddy.
If only he knew he'd been chatting to some bloke watching soccer am [on mute] in his boxers.

They never called again......don't know why, I felt we had a real connection.

Santa Cruz

Every so often interrupt them with some Irish sayings such as Nil aon tintean mar do thintean fein or the first verse of Baidin Fheilimini

positron

I am Indian, and I've tried talking to these guys a few times whenever I get these scam calls. And from what I have figured out they are just call center employees who is following a script. They have no technical knowledge as such, and is just following the training / materials on their screens. I got the feeling that they think they are working for a decent company, and I think they don't realise they are involved in fraud.

PS: Also not sure if all the calls were from India, one guy said Mauritius or somewhere like that.

DoozerT6

positron wrote: »

I am Indian, and I've tried talking to these guys a few times whenever I get these scam calls. And from what I have figured out they are just call center employees who is following a script. They have no technical knowledge as such, and is just following the training / materials on their screens. I got the feeling that they think they are working for a decent company, and I think they don't realise they are involved in fraud.

PS: Also not sure if all the calls were from India, one guy said Mauritius or somewhere like that.

Ah here now...what did they think cold-calling completely random people on the other side of the world with no prior record of 'pc problems' or no connection to their 'company' would involve?? What product or service do they think they are offering, if they are just reading from a pre-prepared script without any real idea of the 'problem'?

positron

A lot of the normal call center work is cold calling anyway, but I don't know DoozerT6, I am not trying to defend them or anything, but it didn't appear to me as I was speaking to couple of clever people who invented the scam - it appeared as if they are employing others to do the dirty work.

Surveyor11

I usually ask them to make sure the complimentary poppadoms are in the bag this time that brings the call to an abrupt end.

Lyaiera

I give out to them for not fixing the printer. We told them it was broken weeks ago.

positron

Found a relevant article from Indian media:

The Caravan Article: Capital Scams

CHERYL LISEE HAD FALLEN on difficult days. Her son was in hospital and though she was receiving some retirement benefits, the 64-year-old resident of the state of Georgia in the United States had been finding it difficult to meet her expenses. In her desperation, Lisee remembered a cold call she had received in the fourth week of August this year, offering her a federal government loan, and leaving her with a number to contact if she was interested. One day, towards the end of August, Lisee dialled the number that the caller had given her.

Lisee’s call did not go through to any US government agency. Instead, a phone rang half a world away, in an apartment in the crowded locality of Pitampura in north-west Delhi. A young man in his mid-30s from Manipur answered the call, and introduced himself as “Eric”. Speaking in a smooth, practised American twang, Eric assured Lisee that he would take her through the process of acquiring the loan. All she would have to do, he told her, is pay a processing fee of $250.

“Eric” is the fake name of an employee of a rogue call centre, one of thousands—as estimated by the Delhi Police—in the capital. These illegal outfits are spread across the city, operating out of one- or two-bedroom apartments in areas such as Vikaspuri, Pitampura, Noida, Dwarka, Janakpuri and Mahipalpur. Typically, each office comprises a few dozen “agents”, who call people in the US and UK and offer them loans, leaving them with a number to call back if they are interested. When the victim calls back, a supervisor, such as Eric, takes over to follow through with the swindle.

Eric instructed Lisee to go to the nearest outlet of the financial services company Western Union, and call him again when she had reached. When she did, he took precautions to ensure that the branch staff did not suspect anything was amiss. “People at the Western Union are now aware of the scams, so they are likely to caution their customers if transactions are made to India,” he said when I met him in Munirka in August. “Therefore, I asked Cheryl to get the form and step aside from the teller.” Lisee filled in the form, and submitted it at the counter along with the cash. Minutes later, Eric’s company was richer by $250.

Precise information about these scam companies is scarce. According to the Delhi Police, more than 10,000 such fake call centres are run out of the city. In early 2013, a report by UK’s Daily Mail stated that 60,000 Britons had been cheated out of £10 million by fake call centres in India. Delhi was revealed to be a hotbed of activity. According to the article: “At its height, more than 1,000 people a day who had legitimately sought unsecured loans with banks and finance companies were being ‘cold called’ from call centres in the Indian capital New Delhi—with 100 of them daily being duped into signing up and paying a ‘processing fee’ to secure non-existent cash.”

What has gone unreported so far is the fact that these operations are heavily reliant on educated youth, mostly tribal, from Manipur, as well as other north-eastern states. In about a dozen outfits whose employees I spoke to, approximately 90 percent of the workforce were people from Manipur. I asked Eric what was motivating young people from the state to join these centres. “What are we supposed to do back home?” he replied. “There aren’t any jobs.”

Government figures over the last decade indicate that Manipur has among the highest self-employment rates in the country, but that the state also has one of the highest proportion of job-seekers to the total population (based on the number of people registered for jobs with government agencies)—around 6.68 lakh people as of 2009, or somewhere in the region of 26 percent of the total population, where most states have figures of less than 10 percent. The distress caused to the unemployed by the shortage of jobs is exacerbated by the state’s brutal history of insurgency, and military and police deployment. The South Asia Terrorism Portal lists the number of insurgent outfits in Manipur at 40. The military and police presence in the state acts as a crushing counter to this activity—according to Human Rights Watch, there are 14,000 police and at least 50,000 soldiers and paramilitary personnel in Manipur. The HRW report states: “According to Manipuri activists, the extent of militarization is such that it is estimated that there is one member of the security forces for every 20 Manipuris.” Many present-day insurgent groups have turned to activities like extortion. It is no surprise, then, that young people from the state look for work elsewhere.

On paper, these young job-seekers are highly literate—the 2011 census pegged Manipur’s literacy at 79.21 percent, ahead of the national average of 74.04 percent. But those I spoke to said that the quality of education left a lot to be desired. “Schools back home are English-medium, no doubt,” said Andrew, an agent at another rogue centre. “But there is something wrong with the system and pedagogy, which is why they continue to churn out half-baked, unemployable minds, who are only fit to be absorbed in fake BPOs and such.”

Isaac, another rogue centre agent, explained to me that he first approached several genuine call centres for work. Each one rejected him because of what they described as the high “MTI”, or mother-tongue influence, in his spoken English. “I was really excited and desperate to get a job and get on with my career, but apparently I don’t speak good enough English,” he said.

Rogue call centres, on the other hand, are relatively easy to join. Interviews last only minutes, after which selected candidates are led to their workstations. They are not required to produce CVs or other documents. Once employed, there are no competitive sales targets to achieve.

At the same time, there is also no job security: many employees I met spoke of rackets that were wound up overnight, leaving employees unpaid. “Even if we were to register a police complaint, the fact that the company was illegal will surely work against us,” Eric said. But for all of them, the insecurity of these jobs in Delhi is better than the life of outright poverty and unemployment back in their home states. Joshua, another call centre employee, argued that these call centres acted as “cushions” for youth from Manipur, providing them with some kind of protection against abject unemployment. “At least this is giving me a salary to support my family,” he said. “Why should I care if it is rogue or not as long as it keeps me alive?”

Andrew lives with his wife and one-and-a-half-year-old daughter in a one-room apartment in Munirka. While we spoke, his daughter kept him occupied, running around the small room and playing. “Look at her,” he said. “She is growing up so fast and there is hardly any open space, like a park, where she can play.” Andrew said he wanted to move to a better neighbourhood for his daughter’s sake, and he would do “anything, almost anything” to make that happen. For now, that entails working in one of Delhi’s rogue call centres. “The government must take the blame for any illegality in the society,” he said, “because the fact of the matter is that it has simply failed its citizens.”

This simmering resentment perhaps explains why people like Eric are comfortable with the idea of swindling people out of their money—in the case of Cheryl Lisee, twice over. “A few days after the first pitch, Cheryl called back upset, from what I could gather from her voice,” Eric said. But this did not worry him—on the contrary, he seized the chance to prolong the scam, by convincing Lisee that there had been a procedural mixup which led to a delay. He then offered her a higher loan on the condition that she deposit a fee, this time of $400. Still desperate for funds, Lisee acquiesced.

Lisee called back again a few days later. With almost unbelievable audacity, Eric tried to extend the scam even further. “It’s a bit funny to say this way,” he said, “but I again offered her higher loan money.” He told her that the Internal Revenue Service had withheld her loan, and that to clear it, she would have to pay a few hundred dollars more. “By this time she was pretty clear that she was being taken for a ride and therefore declined the offer,” he said. “She said she was going to lawyer up before she gets back to me and hung up. She never called back.” Over three calls, Eric had cheated Lisee of $650.

I asked Eric if he felt any remorse for his actions. “In the initial days I used to feel bad for the people from whom we embezzle money,” he said. “But as I went on, I realised that such feelings will only lead to displacement and unemployment. There is nothing personal about what we do. We don’t even know them. To be alive we have to work. It doesn’t matter to me anymore what my action does to others.”

- See more at: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/lede/capital-scams#sthash.QhoLnpGV.dpuf

bnt

I've heard that they tell customers something like "there's a problem with your IP address" - so ask them "what IP address?" I bet you they won't know or will make a wild guess.

You can see your own IP (Internet Protocol) address if you go to speedtest.net and look at the bottom left of the box. In most cases these days, that's the address of the box you got from your internet provider, not the address of a computer. There can be many computers (smartphones, tablets etc.) in one house, all behind that one address.

So, in the unlikely event that the caller has your IP address ... they still can't say that any one computer in the house has the problem ...

kbman

I've also gotten these calls on numberous occasions at work and at home.

One on such occassion, I was told that I was stupid and should throw my computer in the bin when it starts acting up.
They introduced themselves to me by telling me they're from the "Windows Technical Department".

Reports have been in many newspapers around the world, such as the "Irish Times" and "Sydney Herald". I think i've seen it on the bbc site also.

I was unaware of the report by positron, that's interesting

SpaceTime

Just remember that Caller ID means nothing these days. It can be faked.