I just received a call from an indian microsoft technician. He informed me that my PC is sending a ton of error messages to microsoft. Most likely it has been hacked, and he would help me by remoting in and fixing the problem for me. I just wonder… Is it my PopOs or my Manjaro PC that sends all this info to microsoft?
If it’s sending information to Microsoft then it has clearly been hacked. Likely by Microsoft. It was very nice of that young man to break protocol and blow the whistle on this whole thing. You should send him an itunes gift card as a thank you.
Microsoft? More like Hackrosoft!!1!!
But I’ve sent all those to the CIA!
These are the same people - CIA just outsourced their call center to India & they have to send all gift cards back to the CIA, you just cut out the middleman.
What ever u do, DO NOT REDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEM THAT GIFTCARD SIR, SIR I BEG U DO NOT REDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEM
DO NOT REDEEM
WHY ARE YOU REDEEMING
WHY ARE YOU REDEEMING
WHY ARE YOU NOT LISTENING SIR
WHY DID YOU REDEEM SIR
I hope we’re all referencing the same kitboga moment
Is that from one of these “messing with scammers” videos?
Yeah, I believe Kitboga did this with his voice disguised as an old woman.
BITCH ARE YOU MAD?!?
My favorite is: MA’AM ARE YOU A PROSTITUTE?
You reminded me of those YouTube vigilantes that troll Indian scammers. One installed the remote desktop app they use and let them access a honeypot linux machine just to mock their incompetence and confusion. Then proceeded to take control of their machine steal their data and wipe out their computers. Their reactions are hilarious. It’s sad that a lot of very smart people are dragged into it by thugs that leverage debt and physical threats to force them into the scam call centers.
I ended up on a massive Whatsapp group populated primarily by Indian women after I took a content writing class a few years ago. Made several very good friends. I’ve asked them about the whole Indian scammer thing. One of them said she knows a few, and they do it because they literally don’t have other options for employment. Which makes sense. Rampant, unfettered capitalism forces people to make decisions that go against their conscience for the sake of survival. I feel bad for scammers sometimes, other times I feel less charitable when they’re scamming my dad…
Whole situation just fucking sucks.
If I had the opportunity, I’d still wipe the scammers computer.
You absolutely should.
Scammers escaping poverty by putting a bunch of others into poverty is the very definition of a capitalist and cancer.
Eat the rich just as you would zap cancer.
It’s always an excuse that criminals make - that they don’t have any other options for employment. It’s a shitty excuse when 95% of the country is employed and don’t scam people. It’s easy money for them, nothing more.
To be fair, India has about a 10% unemployment rate as of 2023.
Those people chose to not scam people I assume, otherwise they would count in the employed (by scammers)
I’ve done a lot of thinking about the scam market, and there is no way it isn’t some kind of “CIA is behind the cartels” situation.
Primary target? Elderly Americans.
Objective? Bring generational wealth to institutions.
FCC could stop the vast majority of this shit by using techniques similar to DKIM via VOIP to stop spoofing (STIR/SHAKEN). This problem is solved. Has been for a while.
I can only assume they don’t drop the hammer because they can take a cut instead.
Someone’s gotta process the money they are stealing and it sure as shit isn’t some mom and pop bank. We made sure to close all of those.
I can only assume they don’t drop the hammer because they can take a cut instead.
you have way too much faith in a government agencies ability to see, understand, and act on a situation.
Thinking they’re too dumb to do this shit is exactly what they want from you
Do you really think only Americans are targeted by scammers?
I think 80 year old Americans have a disproportionate amount of global wealth, so they are a, as I said, primary target. Yes.
Give it 15 years and then focus will shift to be predominantly toward UAE.
As a European I can assure you 80 yo Americans are living in poverty compared to most Europeans.
I know that Americans can’t see the other side of the ocean but scam calls are made everywhere.
I love these Americans who live in their tiny bubble of “America is rich as hell”. In Europe we mostly compare America with countries like Russia and other large but poor countries.
Americans wealth index only trails behind Iike 3 EU countries. Your statement is googlably false. (Germany, Norway. Not France Not Britain, not Spain, not Italy…not most of Europe).
Edit: also, laughs in GDP
So you’re buying that explanation that a scammer is escaping poverty by putting a bunch of someone else’s into poverty?
You just defined Bezos. Lol. You just got double scammed.
As much as a person could find a reason to feel sorry for them they unnecessarily verbally abuse people they are scamming and that was a choice they made. Their hands are not clean from playing a villain.
And escaping poverty by putting someone else in poverty …that’s the capitalist game. No ethics is part of the package. They are not victims.
I didn’t say they were only victims. I just say it’s a sad situation all around.
It’s not sad for a capitalist who uses the ‘I escaped poverty’ while sinking others into poverty to do it.
You are all over this thread harassing people. I don’t care about your opinion. Don’t talk about crap you don’t understand. Watch the myriad of YouTube channels that cover the scam industry in India. Some people have their family and lives literally threaten with death to pay debts working for scam call centers by literal gangsters. That is sad. I’m not putting my hands in the fire for anyone. But that is also the product of an exploitative capitalist mindset. None of the people actually making the phonecalls are “escaping poverty”. It’s the owners of the computers and offices and bank accounts that accrue the scam money who are getting rich. And those people rarely set foot in the actual call centers.
He’s just a troll. I have seen many comments from this person They’re not even consistent in their opinions. Looks as if they make up shit, probably just asking for attention rather than contributing to the discussion.
You are all over this thread harassing people.
I’m allowed to engage in a forum where I talk to other people other than just you. You are not my world and I don’t need your approval.
‘Harass’ said the person who’s obsessed with me… I think you are personalizing this a lot.
I don’t care about your opinion.
Then why are you here talking to me about my opinion ?
Don’t talk about crap you don’t understand.
You aren’t my boss in life. But this is easily fixed with the block button so this is a choice that you made. I didn’t force it on you to either read it or not.
Watch the myriad of YouTube channels that cover the scam industry in India. Some people have their family and lives literally threaten with death to pay debts working for scam call centers by literal gangsters.
welcome to poverty. This is what happens to people who can’t afford care too. Life is not fair to impoverished but that is NOT nor is it EVER an excuse to impose that on someone else.
That is sad.
Scamming someone else is not sad. It’s infuriating and it’s gross when you give it such an excuse as empathy to con or hurt others. They should own they harmed someone.
I’m not putting my hands in the fire for anyone.
Yet here you are.
But that is also the product of an exploitative capitalist mindset.
And here you are infighting instead of attacking the mindset.
None of the people actually making the phonecalls are “escaping poverty”.
Also you: “* Some people have their family and lives literally threaten with death to pay debts working for scam call centers by literal gangsters. *”
It’s the owners of the computers and offices and bank accounts that accrue the scam money who are getting rich. And those people rarely set foot in the actual call centers.
Yeah and if the person on the phone is no longer in debt and the person on the other side of the line is, they benefited. They are still a villain.
Man, do you just hate empathy or something? Are you OK?
kitboga or something.
Have you watched the latest Kitboga? Pretty heartbreaking, though it has a happy ending.
I have seen those, so first I played along a bit. “Oh, these hackers must be very good. Please help me”. But I had things to do so I cut it short.
I never thought one of them would call me. I’m so much outside the target demographic. They might be getting desperate to find targets.
You don’t need threats, that’s the career path for CS degrees
All that malware should be running without problems. Wine’s gotten pretty good by now.
Ah yes, I remember back in the day we had to build WINE with unofficial patches to get malware to work. How times have changed.
But how’s Siddhartha going to find the Event Viewer!?
Can someone confirm if syskeying works on Wine?
I still chuckle about the fact that WannaCry the ransomware software has a WineHQ entry
Proper malware often still doesn’t run. Cheap executables to encrypt your stuff and so on the other hand work well.
Which is why wine should be run as its own unpriviledged user…
One time I kept a guy on the phone for about ten minutes just playing dumb. Then he’s like, sir, what version of Windows do you have?"
I say, I’m not sure but it’s the one with the little penguin icon.
We actually had a good laugh about it together
I won free airline tickets once and was shocked and appalled when they said I COULDNT use them to go to the moon. I fought long and hard for the right to use those tickets the way I wanted but alas.
Lmao
Set up a fake Windows VM to fuck with them
There was a very custom theme for Gnome 2 that made it look like Windows XP…
That might be even funnier, but there’s still a chance they’re proficient enough that they could cause problems once they realized what was happening. A VM would help mitigate the chances of that.
Obvious answer is to do both: A VM of a Linux desktop skinned to look like Windows XP
There was a good version of windows 7 set up for this. Command prompts wouldn’t work right, and really messed with them if you gave then access.
I let one in once and managed to reverse the remote desktop and took over their computer.
That was fun.
its a dangerous virus known as ‘Linux’ which can completely replace your precious Windows installation! be careful, there is a lot of propaganda pushing free (as in communism) software
I once looked at a Linux PC and I couldn’t stop reading Karl Marx ever since.
What is this unfortunate disease called
Communism. You get it automatically from using Linux. Everybody knows that.
Once someone asked if somebody knows how to run this old game in a linux community.
The game was “capitalism lab”. I said no, we are communists.
The guy then deleted his post.
Definitely. You should buy Google Play gift cards to pay for his services straight away.
I once played along just to waste their time. Got to the point where I had to go to a site and get my IP address.
I told him it was 127.0.0.1, and he just said “I think you be messing with me now sir” and hung up. :D
You could’ve told him your local IP (192.168.(1…255).(1…255)), is completely useless outside your home network but looks real enough.
Anybody with a bit of technical knowledge will recognize a local IP address
My father in law called me because he talked to a MS support rep about how his computer was dying. He was running Linux Mint.
lol
Hello my name is
DeepakJohn Smith. I’m Microsoft. You clearly have wirus you madarchodNow please type dablu dablu dablu in your address bar
A friend’s neighbor just fell for this. She received a call from the “nicest” Microsoft tech and decided she’d let them into her PC. Within 10 minutes after hanging up she received a call from her bank asking if an $800 debit was valid. It took her weeks to clean up the mess.
Naievety tax
Well Manjaro is known for DDOSing the AUR. So there is that
Curious question, is it “safe” to let them enter into a VM that runs windows? And is there an easy way to record their ip (to hand over to the police)
lol I’m sure the Indian police will definitely not throw that info in the bin
Depending on the type of VM it may not be completely sandboxed. Not worth it in my opinion. Also the police aren’t going to do squat. Hell they wouldn’t do anything even if they were down the street not to mention they’re on the other side of the earth.
Ehh. With enough digital forensics performed, you can generally get the information to authorities who will do something. For the average power user, this level of forensics is more than you’re going to be able to perform on your own. Simply having an IP address really isn’t sufficient. One unsubstantiated claim with an IP address doesn’t constitute enough evidence for them to take action, especially by someone who lives in a different country.
I only say so because I’ve seen the lengths some people have gone to in order to track down scammers and similar nefarious individuals and “companies”, and it is quite involved. Far more than what I would expect any single person to take on by themselves and frequently requiring extensive knowledge of the tools used, the vulnerabilities in those tools, and a fair amount of legwork (literally traveling around to collect information)… Which isn’t to mention a good amount of funding. At the end of the day, you’re just cutting off one of the heads of the Hydra, and they’ll be back in short order. There’s no shortage of morally bankrupt people willing to exploit and extort people with more money than sense, or at least, without enough technical understanding to know better. The problem isn’t exclusive to India, and with a billion people, there’s bound to be a disproportionate representation of scoundrels in that region whom are happy to rob anyone and everyone of their last dime just to get rich.
Bluntly, it’s more of a statement on humanity than it is of India, the Indian people, or their culture. These garbage people exist everywhere… Snake oil salesmen come to mind.
It’s probably better to get in contact with the people who are professionals at this if you want to help out.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
