Friday 10 January 2014

001234567890


I got home last night, and H.I. told me that there had been a phone call from someone with a foreign accent, telling her that there was something wrong with her computer, and he could fix it for her.

A feeling of dread came over me when I asked if she had responded to the caller in any way. Luckily, I should have had more faith in her. She just told him to call back at 10.00 am this morning and speak to me about it.

I checked on the number, and it was 001234567890. Hmm.

The only reason that she gave him even this much of the time of day is because - as you may know - I recently installed Facetime on my Mac, and have been having some very one-sided conversations with Green-Eyes in London.

She calls me up, and I hear the ring tone come through the machine, but when I accept the incoming call, all I see is myself and all I hear is the staccato, fragmented sound which is obviously her laughing at me. No words can be made out.

I tried calling her back with the same result, then I called her brother - also with the same result.

I paid the Mac Shop 69p for this app, but the only back-up or support I can get from them to try and make it work is by going onto a forum, where all their unsatisfied customers get together to moan about the thing, which doesn't work for them either.

So I tried getting into the preferences section, only to find that I had forgotten the ridiculously long password they forced me to create, having written it down in shorthand. When I asked for a password reminder, it told me that it sent one to my email address, but I didn't find it until this morning because they sent it to a different email address than the one I had registered with them.

Tonight, I will try again and - more likely than not - go through the same humiliating experience of having an invisible, 19 year old girl laugh at me from 120 miles away, with no chance of redress on my part unless I pick up a phone and call her without being able to see her as she sees me. Bloody hell.

Of course, 001234567890 did not call back this morning, and this was because they were busy trying to rob someone else who was actually online at the time. Our machine was switched off.

The trick is that they call someone who they (somehow, but it's not difficult)  know is online, then they tell them they have a problem. They ask the victim to perform a series of checks on their machine which will always come up with the same code number, no matter whose machine it is, then they try to get all sorts of other information like email address, etc.

They then remotely lock-up your computer - or, more precisely, get you to lock it up yourself - and ask you to hang up and try to make another call from your landline, knowing that the line is locked (actually, just engaged) and you will believe that there really is a fault on it.

They call you back a few minutes later, asking if - for a fee of £50 or whatever - you would like them to fix the problem for you. The least they get is the £50, but they also get your card details, which could be useful in the future - the very near future.

If this ever happens to you and you get as far as not being able to call out from your landline, just leave it for a quarter of an hour, and they will get bored and move onto their next victim, automatically unlocking your phone in the process.

Most young people don't have land-lines these days, so the hoaxers know that - more often than not - their targets are likely to be quite old and, as such, not quite as clued up on technology as their children or grandchildren might be.

I wish you could have heard the fragmented, robotic laughter of the invisible Green-Eyes last night. I am still waiting for a virtual tour of her flat as she walks about it with her iPad, pointing at various walls and cupboards as I sit here in Bath telling her how much I like it.

And I thought Macs were idiot-proof.

(Just as I finished writing the above, the phone went, and a helpful Indian gentleman was on the other end.  Guess what? I have a problem with my computer which I don't even know about, but he will help me to fix! He began by asking, "Is that Mr Shaw?" If I had answered, "No, it's Mr Stephenson", then that would be step one - he would have immediately got my correct name. I kept calling him a criminal, and he eventually went away).

25 comments:

  1. I wonder if this guy speaks French with a Nigerian accent; he called me too!

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    1. It cannot have been me - I speak English with a bad French accent, and pretend that I am Nigerian. This is why I am so unsuccessful.

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  2. Last time this happened to me I told them I didn't have a computer

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    1. They knew you were lying, in the same way that you knew they were lying. Never the less, good policy.

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  3. A timely warning Tom. A friend is being called in the middle of the night at present by an international number which is not traceable. I shall tell her to read your blog just in case.

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    1. Is she called Tracey? If so, just tell her I am not Nigerian. Thanks.

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  4. I can so live without Facetime. I will never enable it and have to say that it sounds a bit spooky to me.

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    1. I could so live without it too, but now I have paid 69p for it, I so can't live until it works.

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  5. Sky keeps calling me
    They are very polite, Irish and persistent

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    1. Fucking hell - is this more dyslexia (skype?) or are you having visitations from the Heron god already? I did warn you.

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    2. He left me an innocuous post........
      Crawler

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    3. Sky ( the tv channel) keeps ringing x

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  6. "oh, thank you for telling me. My son's a computer engineer. I'll get him to look at it now" usually shuts them up.

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    1. 'My son is a hit-man who is based in your part of the world' does it for me.

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    2. I believe you won back the prize for this retort.

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  7. I've told them i don't have a computer (i've used this a few times). I've also asked them for their name, the name of their company, and where they're located. They sometimes then hang up right away. Other times, they say something unintelligible, and i ask them to spell it out for me. Once, when i was particularly irked, i said, "I"m just keeping you on the line long enough to get the call traced--got it!" The hang up was immediate, and i did trace the call, then lodged a complaint with the FCC (US Federal Communications Commission). Since the feds are listening in, i figured telling another agency my problem might allow even more federal monies to be spent.

    I'm probably due for the next round of calls, and shall have to keep that hit-man line in mind.

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    1. Our international callers are more thick-skinned than that. I politely told an Indian man once that I did not want to be rude to him, so I suggested he should just hang up. He just carried on as normal from the script, so I ended up saying, "Fuck off!" to him.

      "No. YOU fuck off!" was his response. That was worth the hassle.

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  8. Very inventive computer-criminals! Till now I never had that sort of phone-call - though now I've been warned, thank you. Still try to decipher the used-guide (more than 100 pages) of my new Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 - wow - what I could do with it if only I would understand it :-)

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    1. I know. There are things on this machine that I will never know existed.

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  9. I once had nothing better to do when I got a similar call, so I put on an old lady sort of voice ( I am an old lady, but the voice isn't old!!) and kept them going for about 5 minutes while I pretended to go and switch my computer on..that took me ages cos I was an old lady!…and then do the various things they were telling me until he got to the bit about clicking on " start" in the bottom left corner. " Oh dear I can't see that " says I for while….at which point I then confessed that I had a " Mac" and told him to" sod off you nasty scammer" or words to that effect. Quite fun if you have the time.

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    1. An out of work actor friend of mine (you would have heard him telling you to "Brace Brace" on various airlines) got a job as a cold-caller, and was horrified at the amount of people who told him to 'fuck off', even though he was a salesman, not a criminal. I am quite polite to those poor people who are just trying to make a living now, but I would like to say that to their bosses.

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    2. Yes, I try and be fairly polite to normal cold callers, but not to scammers!!

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  10. just had a similar call from foreign sounding man called Matthew saying my computer had errors ..... he asked for.the main computer user so I gave the phone to my 5 year old ....... they never stay on long after that

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  11. I just had a call from the Nigerian man (with a typically English name, of course! ). I didn't give him the time of day and then I do what I do with all nuisance calls and barred him. If he rings again, it won't ring our end so we'll never know - unless he changes his number, of course! :-/

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