How to silence a scammer.

Hi Friends.

It was a stonker of a morning when I opened the back cabin door, I was greeted by a frost and clean air.

The air was so still that the reflections on the water were so clear. I love mornings like this. For a change we had sunshine to follow, which we have not had for some days. Paddy had a spring in his step, when he climbed out of the boat and jumped off the back counter to head off for his walk. It was rather slippery under foot, so whilst he was not bothered by the ice, I was being a little more careful. On our return to the boat, Marmite was sitting on the step waiting for us to return, knowing full well she would get her much needed breakfast. Anyone would think she was never fed. Animals sorted, fires sorted, next I had the bed to strip, as it was bedding wash day today. Whilst the bedding was washing, I got on and remade the bed with a crisp, clean duvet cover, sheet and pillow cases. There is nothing nicer than climbing into clean bedding. After the washing was done, it was hung in the engine room and back cabin and did not take long to dry, with the stove going.

It was 11 am and time to start thinking about something for lunch. I had decided on doing Singapore noodles with Chicken, this is a dish we have had at Wetherspoon’s, it is in the menu for two meals for £7.99. I began preparing the veggies and the chicken. At 11.30 am the phone rang. I answered it and a gentleman told me he was from Microsoft, I listened to his Indian voice and though nah this is not right, so put the phone done. No sooner I got into the galley the phone rang again, but this time Keith answered the phone. The following is what happened next as told by Keith.

Just had an interesting 1½ hour conversation with a scammer. He said we was from Microsoft and was trying to tell me that my computer was causing errors. He knew and quoted my CLSID, which he then got me to look up according to the description below, even pointing me to the errors as also quoted. Despite telling him I had worked with computers since 1982 as a computer engineer, and knew more about computers then he, I was passed to 2 other colleagues, 1 supposedly an engineer and the lady was in registration, all coming out with similar statements, especially emphasising that my Microsoft licence would be revoked and my computer closed down!

Whilst all this was going on I was cooking lunch which got spoilt, but I did have a giggle at Keith picking thie scammers apart. . At this point Keith asked the man to ring back so we could eat our lunch, and during this time Keith did some research on-line and found the following:-
"A CLSID is a Class Identifier stored in the Windows Registry — at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID, but I don’t recommend that you go digging into the Registry unless you really know what you’re doing. Fortunately (from the point of view of interfering with Registry entries), the scammer doesn’t need you to edit the registry to find the CLSID he’s looking for. He simply has to persuade you to run the ASSOC command. It’s easy to do: you click on the Start button, Run, type in CMD to get to the command prompt (DOS prompt) and type ASSOC. That runs through a long list of file associations, telling you (for instance) that “.xltx=Excel.Template”.
Since it’s a long file it scrolls straight to the bottom, but if you’re really interested in seeing exactly what it contains, you can get it to go through page by page by typing in “assoc | more”: however, the scammer wants you to go straight to the bottom so that you’ll see this entry:
ZFSendToTarget=CLSID{888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062}
That’s the CLSID on all PCs and is not unique to your computer. Amazingly, it’s also the one that the scammer quoted. And I bet that if you have a recent version of Windows and go through the same steps you’ll find that you have it too. In other words, the scammer can’t see your CLSID or anything else on your PC, including your Event Viewer logs. Unless, of course, you fall for the scam and give him remote access with AMMYY or LetMeIn.
Event Viewer? That’s the tool he uses to persuade you that the transitory errors inevitably flagged in its logs are “evidence” of a system problem or malware infection. Of course, they’re no such thing."
I did not think we would hear anything else from these scammers, how daft was I because one of them rang back Keith told him that he had sent an email to Microsoft and that until he had a reply to it he was not going to proceed any further, to which he hung up and so far has not rung back. I must admit they were very convincing and it was disturbing when Keith was threatened with my pc being closed down, but fortunately he knew what they were trying to do. Now don't get me wrong but considering all 3 that he spoke to said they were in San Francisco California, they all spoke with an Asian accent, and when he asked to speak to an American to prove they were from Microsoft in America, none of them could do so, surprise, surprise. So please be warned about these phone calls, and pass on, or share if you wish, as less suspecting and savvy folks than us may get caught out by it as it does sound very convincing. If you do get a similar call even if you ask for names they give you names, the two I was given were Richard Harrison, and Anne Johnson, bearing in mind the accents were Asian!

I have already spoken to a friend, who also had the same thing happen to her, thankfully she was not taken in. These people were so persistent, I am glad it was their phone bill and not ours. I wonder how many people they do actually manage to scam each day?

After such an exciting morning, the afternoon was really boring, so I will not bother to send you to sleep.