I have posted about this in various different forums in the past but thought I would do an actual blog post on what has been a long standing scam on the internet.
I got an unsolicited call today from a fellow with a really heavy Indian accent stating that my computer has downloaded some malicious code and he is going to help me with it. He claimed to be from the “Windows Technical Department”.
If you want to read another post from almost 5 years ago you will get the just of the call. The irony is that it is clearly the same person and even uses the same CSLID code. If you Google “CSLID” you will get all kinds of scam links come up.
http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/15066-Cyber-Criminals-Just-Came-A-Callin-At-My-House.html
It goes without saying that you will never get a call from some random company that has information about your computer being infected. You will note that I started asking questions and he simply diverts them by changing the topic. I had exactly the same call last year and aggravated the caller (who may have been the same guy) to the point that he hung up. He asked me the name of the computer and I told him it was “Wombat 37” which was a name I totally made up. He said that he thought that was the right computer. I asked him the IP address of the computer that was acting up and he told me it was ‘illegal’ for him to know the IP address. That is a funny one. He said that is why the CLSID is there because of that.
Today I just kept him hanging and optimistic perhaps that he had a ‘live one’ until I finally got bored and told him that the “Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cybersecurity website” kept popping up. At that point, he got suspicious and I ended the call. Here listen to the audio if you want to hear what these calls sound like:
More information on the various cyber scams can be found on the RCMP Cyber Crime website:
Safe Identity Canada 