#tech support scams

[munaeem]

The Rise of Indian Scammers: How They Deceive American Citizens

Understanding the $10 Billion-a-Year Fraud Operation A sinister and highly profitable scam has emerged from India in recent years. It targets unsuspecting American citizens. This scam is raking in an astonishing $10 billion annually. This operation exploits the trust built by legitimate tech support and customer service call centers. It turns this trust into a weapon against vulnerable…

[mylifeisruined69420]

best scammers in the world or just some office job idk

[mylittleredgirl]

i was typing out a jokey post about how “i don’t play video games anymore because having the oldest possible usable apple laptop is the bitter nail polish of breaking that addiction” when i got an email from a group list of aging alums from my parents’ old community in all caps saying “mac users i need to borrow an operating system installation disc, must be 10.1 or higher” a disc? OSX????

[spamreports]

Google Forms used by scammers for tech support crypto scams

🎣 Remember, the technical support of UniSwap, PancakeSwap Balancer, Metamask, TrustWallet, CoinBase, Kraken and so on will never give you a Google form link to fill out! 🛑 Never fill out anything in google forms, no matter what is the fake reason. 💸 Filling out data via google forms is a guaranteed way to get immediately robbed blind.

🏦 Never reveal nor enter your seed phrase (or wallet JSON) anywhere!

But some end users get desperate, are scared, insecure, inexperienced or plain old gullible and naïve, conveniently falling for the same scams that have been floating around since the ICO craze of 2017. Meanwhile E Mask allowed anyone to buy a blue tick on twatter, so this type of scam is more successful than ever, gee thanks. 6 years later, literally the same scam from 2017 is still pocketing ill gotten gains to cybercriminals.

h/t Daniel Lopez

[abronzeagegod]

22 and/or 40 with your nerd techs pretty please

Kiss Number 22. ...in a rush of adrenaline

No one was more surprised than Lyta when Aeth suggested that not only they go to the local fall carnival. The cheap fried food, overpriced sugar candy, and thrill rides never would have occurred to Lyta that Aeth would enjoy that kind of thing.

And yet. Here they are. At the carnival.

A temporary thing set up only a few hundred yards from the bay. The sun had set and the water was entirely empty, except for the few ships that could afford the very expensive and powerful wards.

They spent several hours having a lot of fun. They went on rides. They ate terrible but amazing food. They played games.

They held hands.

Lyta suggested that they do the haunted house, as it was the one attraction that they hadn't done yet. But Aeth was a little reticent. Not that Lyta could blame them.

"Maybe we should just head home then," Lyta said.

"I'm not ready to head back just yet," Aeth responded. "I'm having too much fun with you."

Then Aeth suggested something infinitely scarier than a haunted house staffed by weird teenaged theater kids.

"Let's go dip our toes in the water."

"What? Are you kidding me?" Lyta said, stopping dead in her tracks. "The Deep Ones have eaten people for way less!"

"I'm not suggesting we go skinny dipping," they said, as if that was some kind of defense. "We can just go and sit with our feet in the water and watch the city lights. Maybe even the boats. Come on. We're both powerful people, we can handle making a couple of wards that'll last a few minutes."

Aeth spoke quietly, holding Lyta's hands, holding her close. It was a private thing, just for the two of them.

And of course, she couldn't say no.

Luckily, for Lyta, she had a bunch of extra magic because the notorious carnival games were making people very mad.

The two left the bright lights and noise of the carnival behind them to the beach where they quickly discarded their socks and shoes, rolled up their pant legs, and went to the edge of the water.

They sat with magic and water encircling their feet as they held hands and watched the distant lights of the other side of Reckonfall that surrounded the bay that connected them to the rest of the world.

It was nice. It was peaceful. They weren't eaten alive by the Deep Ones or their children.

"Let's go for a swim," Aeth whispered, like it was a secret.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me!" Lyta said. "Absolutely not! I swear that's how people piss off the Deep Ones and that's how we get eaten!"

But then Aeth was taking off their shirt and starting to work on the button of their pants and Lyta lost all ability to reason. So she followed suit.

Skinny dipping with Aeth. In the bay.

She couldn't not make a triple layered ward though. For both of them. Even though she saw Aeth make their own ward, Lyta was definitely afraid for both of them.

But with Aeth, naked, in the cold water of the bay, just the two of them, gentle lights and sounds from Reckonfall and the carnival nearby made it all so exciting.

Until she felt something move, something brush against her shin. Her naked shin.

To say Lyta screamed was an understatement. It was something of a shriek of terror as she threw herself at Aeth.

"Don't worry! It was some seaweed!" Aeth said as their own magic highlighted the culprit underwater.

With her heart racing and her naked body pressed up against Aeth's Lyta kissed her partner hard. It was teeth and crushing and in desperation with the timing of her thunder heart.

It likely would have continued if not for a call from the edge of the water.

"Hey! You two making out!" yelled the voice. "I'd get out of the water if I were you."

Lyta's face felt hot with embarrassment. Her and Aeth sank lower in the water, trying hard to not be noticed.

"Look, I don't give a shit what you're doing right now. You've got pretty powerful wards, or you're very stupid, but either way I'm having a meeting with someone in the Bay and they're a magic eater, so yeah... probably a good time to get out of the water and put your clothes back on."

Lyta covered her face with her hands and used her shame and magic to conjure a small ice wall to shield them from the stranger on the beach.

They quickly changed, sharing secret looks and smiles, before taking off.

They turned back when there was a flash of green as person on the beach they tried to avoid eye contact with put their own clothes in a pile and walked towards the beach. This woman in her underwear was approached by a something walking out of the water.

"Holy shit," Lyta whispered.

Aeth grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the beach. "This isn't something we should spy on."

[sarah-ankh]

😑

Silly user nearly got phished because she was using bing and clicking on the first link without reading it.

She only stopped because the login page got flagged by our system as not secure.

When I backed out to the search results and made her read them she couldn't tell which one was real, so I had to search her emails for the original link she got sent.

Did I mention this was for a secure Dropbox for financial auditing?

And she doesn't actually know where shes meant to send our sensitive financial information...

Welp. I saved the right one now for her.

(who tf uses bing?)

[tuttle-did-it]

I'm a very big fan of when specialists debunk crap online because it's ineffective or dangerous.

[ehnrat]

Whenever I get to do computer technician work at my job or where ever, I look and feel like this afterwards

I got like two high fives today for fixing some computer monitors nwn

[butter-muncher]

I GOT MY MAIN ACCOUNT BACK FOR A FLEETING SECOND BEFORE IT WAS TEARED AWAY AGAIN

[alianoralacanta]

Got a "tech support" call on Tuesday. Tip: if the call is from someone who says nobody can have 2 computers in the same house, they're not tech support.

(Quicker rubric: if they claim to be tech support, you didn't call them first and you are not at work, it's not tech support either. Nor is it tech support if the caller won't give their name and company on request. Nor is it tech support if they claim to be from a company who wouldn't logically provide it to you - no matter what the reason for it is. Nor is it tech support if your actual tech support doesn't use the indicated contact detail. Check by contacting your actual tech support using your usual method if in doubt.

[quecksilvereyes]

oh my god do not click links in emails that tell you to verify your data or your bank account gets locked or click links in messages telling you your safety protocol is ending, like, tomorrow, you will get SCAMMED SO BAD AND YOU WILL LOSE A LOT OF FUCKING MONEY never ever let anyone pressure you into giving away login information especially to your online banking by creating a sense of urgency oh my GOD

some things to look out for

1. spelling mistakes. do you know how many rounds of marketing and sales experts these things go through? if theres a spelling mistake dont click it

2. not using your name. if an email adresses you with "dear customer" or, even worse, a generic "ladies and gentlemen", it is most likely not actually targeted to you

3. verifying or login links. even IF your bank was stupid enough to send these to customers, dont EVER click those. look at me. they can legally argue that youve given your data away and thus they dont have to pay you anything back DONT CLICK THAT FUCKING LINK

4. creating a sense of urgency. do this or we lock your account next week. do this or your ebanking stops working tomorrow. give us all your money in cash or your beloved granddaughter will get HANGED FOR MURDERING BABIES. no serious organisation would ever do something like that over email or sms. ever. hands off.

5. ALWAYS CHECK WHO SENT YOU THE EMAIL. the display name and the email adress can vary a LOT. anyone can check the display name. look at the email adress. does it look weird? call the fucking place it says its from. you will likely hear a very weary sigh.

6. if its in a phonecall, scammers love preventing you from hanging up or talking to other people to have a little bit of a think about whats happening. there should always be a possibility to go hey i wanna think about this ill call back the official number thanks.

7. do not, i repeat, do NOT a) call a phone number flashing on your screen promising to rid your computer of viruses after clicking a dodgy link and b) let them install shit on your computer like. uh. idk. teamviewer.

7.i. TEAM VIEWER LETS PEOPLE USE YOUR COMPUTER HOWEVER THEY WANT AS LONG AS THEYRE CONNECTED. IF YOU DONT KNOW FOR FUCKING SURE YOURE TALKING TO ACTUAL TECH SUPPORT DONT GIVE ANYONE ACCESS TO YOUR COMPUTER.

fun little addendum: did you know a link can just automatically download shit? like. a virus? an app you can't uninstall unless you reset your entire device? dont click links unless youre extremely sure you know where they lead. hover your mouse over it and check the url.

thanks.

[meanya]

I saw a post before about how hackers are now feeding Google false phone numbers for major companies so that the AI Overview will suggest scam phone numbers, but in case you haven't heard,

PLEASE don't call ANY phone number recommended by AI Overview

unless you can follow a link back to the OFFICIAL website and verify that that number comes from the OFFICIAL domain.

My friend just got scammed by calling a phone number that was SUPPOSED to be a number for Microsoft tech support according to the AI Overview

It was not, in fact, Microsoft. It was a scammer. Don't fall victim to these scams. Don't trust AI generated phone numbers ever.

[booasaur]

I've watched the people boosting this gofundme become more and more desperate as the Rafah invasion draws near:

This baby was born during this genocide and has only ever known this genocide. If you can donate to help her family evacuate, please do.

If you were thinking about donating to any evacuation, now is the time. They don't have much left.

Edited (2024-05-01):

The target has been reached so I've gone ahead and locked this post

I really do want to express my thanks to everyone who donated and boosted:

Edited (2024-05-03):

I've unlocked this post because I guess not only do Gazans have to deal with needing to crowdfund to leave their home to escape bombs and bullets and starvation, not only do sites like gofundme and PayPal not support them and arbitrarily lock or cancel accounts unless you find someone abroad you can trust or you get scammed, NOT ONLY do you then have to successfully complete a campaign which relies on popularity, marketing ability, timing, grasp of English, access to tech (what's going to happen to all the people who simply can't manage all this?), BUT you also get charged an exorbitant fee to then be able to withdraw the money so you can pay to cross into Egypt.

The gofundme is open again with the target raised 15,000 to account for the fee, a little less than 1,800 needed at the moment:

Edited (2024-05-04):

Thank you so much, everyone, we reached this secondary target as well! I'll leave this post unlocked for a while since every bit of additional money will go to their life in Egypt.