Jul 1, 2020
I got a call today, pretending (according to the caller ID) to be from my local Apple Store. This is the full recording of me pretending to believe them, up until the point where they could actually cause any damage. This demonstrates how these scammers try to scare you into giving them total remote-control over your computer, how to prove this is the case, and how to prevent it from happening. (Note how he asks about "the key next to the Ctrl key," which happens to be the key shared by both Windows and Apple machines.)
They obviously do this because it must work for at least a substantial percentage of the population, so please consider sharing this with someone who you feel might benefit from this knowledge.
This also contains a cameo, and good questions, by ten-year-old Squeaky.
👆(This is hosted by my podcast @ActivistMMT, only because I have no better place to host it 🙂)
Here's a cool related story from a programmer friend in response to this post/episode:
I had a scam caller.... like this.
I quickly started up Virtual Box, copied a VM, and got him to guide me through setting up a remote connection to this duplicate. He then proceded to delete all the registry settings. I rebooted it, (recopied the VM) and restored it. He then connected again, and deleted everything and I rebooted the machine with a fresh copy of the VM.
It took about 4 goes before he realised what was going on and told me I was a M***F***...and hung up.
HA. Dont mess with a dev! ;-)
His goal was to put my PC in such a state, that I would be forced to pay him to restore it to working condition. He tried to get me to sign up for payment, to hand over my credit card details. NO!