Should the bank have paid him back?

[GreenMirror]

How much was his house worth?

[MonkeysUncle]

My uncle got caught out. Back in 2015 when TalkTalk got hacked and thousands of customers details were stolen. Someone called him up saying they were from TalkTalk and given the data breach just needed to check his account was ok.

It was an hour in, apps installed, logged onto his bank account and only when they asked him to transfer money to an account abroad (to check that it was really him!!!) Did he decide to hang up and call me.

When I did tech support I had the following convo with one of the traders of a investment firm we used to support:

Monday Morning:
Trader: Hey so I had Microsoft call me up yesterday
Me: Errr.....what....
Trader: Yeah I thought it weird on a sunday but they said they found something on my machine which is causing an issue
Me:...Microsoft.....the billion pound company....called you.....on a sunday.....because of however millions of windows machines out there in the world, they found yours with a problem....?
Trader: Oh tulip....

[WTFH]

Are you sure she was joking?

No she wasn’t.

[vetran]

Are you sure she was joking?

First hand experience! My little Brucie Bonus.

[Mordac]

Mrs V has great fun with these guys, she told one that she paid her usual IT guy by sleeping with him!

Are you sure she was joking?

[Mordac]

Perhaps he read the glowing reviews of their service

Comments About 01962441001 / 01962 441001 - Page 2

Wondows support center uk. I'm thinking they may have some branding issues...

I wonder if they use my well-rehearsed technique:

[mudskipper]

Perhaps he read the glowing reviews of their service

Comments About 01962441001 / 01962 441001 - Page 2

[vetran]

Mrs V has great fun with these guys, she told one that she paid her usual IT guy by sleeping with him!

[mudskipper]

My mum fell for one of these scams - given her complete lack of tech-savviness, I was amazed that he'd managed to get her to successfully install logmein. He obviously would have made a good support guy.

It was at the time that Windows 10 was being pushed out, so she'd been seeing lots of messages about Windows 10, and when he said he was from Microsoft, she asked if it was to do with the messages and of course he said yes.

To cut a long story short, he had access for about 40 minutes before she suddenly wondered if it was a scam and phoned me, but I couldn't find anything dodgy installed. He might have imaged her disk of course. We did tell her banks, but in the event she died a very short time after, so all the accounts were locked anyway. Every cloud has a silver lining

But she was 82, and definitely not anything to do with IT.

[ladymuck]

Several obvious warning signs there...

1. BT don't give a fig about your router status
2. BT will never call you to be helpful
3. BT will never offer compensation for inconvenience caused by them

The bloke is an idiot and should not have received his money back.

[vetran]

seriously why can't banks require you to pre arrange accounts that you pay large amounts to?

Set up an account list that you can transfer over £200 in X days without additional security checks.

Accounts for house purchases, cars etc would need to be special warrantied ones held by conveyancers.

You could possibly have one account with the safeties off and use that if need be by transferring to it.

[BR14]

Retired IT Manager - FFS

t

Explains it all really, just like most PM's - clueless.

I enjoy the microsoft ones, string them along with 'i don't see that option' etc, for ten mins or so, and then tell them i'm running Linux

[xoggoth]

The Banks and the govt should jointly run a series of TV ads explaining that if you get a call from someone purporting to be from BT/Microsoft etc. it will always be a scam.

Sensible. Hard to believe people still fall for this stuff given all the warning that bank and major companies disseminate, maybe some ads carefully timed close to Coronation Street, Eastenders and other crap watched by idiots would help.

Maybe we should be able to set up an amount so that any payment or transfer over that sends an alert and requires approval. Or do they have that already?

Worryingly these scams are getting increasingly clever. Had an email yesterday that was not just the usual generic thing, it had my name in it.

PS On OP's question, no. The banks paying means the rest of us do.

[Mordac]

Retired IT Manager - FFS

A criminal posing as BT engineer took control of my*computer - then robbed me of £7,800 | Daily Mail Online

I say not

The Banks and the govt should jointly run a series of TV ads explaining that if you get a call from someone purporting to be from BT/Microsoft etc. it will always be a scam.
BT will usually write to you, and if you call them with a problem, they are usually next to useless, so the concept of them being proactive is faintly comical.
Microsoft will only offer phone support if you are a large multinational and pay them an annual fortune for access to their Indian call centre.
I had 2 in one day last week, it's quite good fun to play dumb for a bit, and string them along (that's 5 mins they can't scam someone else, every little helps). Then it's time to tell them I don't have BT broadband.

[GhostofTarbera]

Retired IT Manager - FFS

A criminal posing as BT engineer took control of my computer - then robbed me of £7,800 | Daily Mail Online

I say not