Fun With Tech Support Scammers

A little earlier this evening I received a "tech support" scam call.  I've noticed that this scam has been going around in a few forms over the last few months.  The basic premise is, someone phones up saying that your computer has been sending error reports, has viruses etc and attempts to dupe the mark in to either downloading a repair utility (malware) or allow the "technician" remote control through a remote support tool such as LogMeIn etc.

Suffice it to say, this was a short call:

Caller: Hello, I am calling from Microsoft Windows XP tech support, do you know your computer is sending us error reports?Me: No... I'm actually a little surprised it would be sending reports to Microsoft as I use a Macintosh.*hangs up*Me: Hello?

After spending a few minutes laughing to myself (a rather evil, self satisfied laugh at that!) I started kicking myself.  I'd missed a golden opportunity.  Reason being, I'm not a Mac user, I'm not a Windows user (my laptop has Windows 7 but I rarely use it) - Most of the time I run Fedora Linux.

I'm starting to wish I'd played along.  That way I could see how long it would take for them to figure out that I'm not actually running Windows, made a little more believable by pretending not to be an expert (I've seen enough novices to be able to pull it off!).

Gotta love scambaiting :-D