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Scammer: Now once you've clicked on "Administrative Errors," do you find any changes in the middle of the box? Me: Yes, quite a lot of errors. Are these the attacks? Scammer: Yes. Do you have any idea why you're getting these types of warning errors on the main administrative box? Me: No, I generally get my son to look after my computer, so I really don't know what you're talking about. Scammer: Okay, sir. So, you basically don't understand why you're not getting any of these errors and warnings. Is that correct, sir? Me: Yes, that's correct. Scammer: Here's what happens, sir. Whenever you go do any activities on your computer, at that point in time these malicious files and hacking tools are getting downloaded inside of your computer without your knowledge, which day by day can corrupt the administrative part, as well as the boot sector part of your computer.Truly despicable. But they thought they had me roped in, so I went along with it. I let them guide me to help93.com via the command line and download a remote-control application. At that point, I asked him to confirm he was from Microsoft, so he showed me how to get a CLSID entry up in a command prompt. A CLSID entry is a globally unique identifier for COM class identities for systems running Windows. In this example, they chose a reference that would be the same for every Windows platform; however, they informed me this stood for Computer License Security Identification and that only two people knew this ID, Microsoft and myself, and told me to keep it secret. Clearly, this guy from India Microsoft was legit, right? By now, I had spent 20 minutes on the call with him. It was time to end the charade. So, I used the remote-control software warning against the scammer. Here's what I said:
Me: I'm reading this, okay? It says: "By starting the Supremo connection, you're allowing the remote control of your computer or server. Don't allow unknown people to get control of your machine." And then it says: "Neither Nanosystems nor Microsoft contact individuals offering unsolicited support services." It tells me you're a fraudster.... Are you a fraudster? Right, this call has been recorded, you are a fraudster, and I am a technology professional. I know exactly what you are doing. Everything has been recorded, and we will report it to the authorities. Goodbye."Five minutes later, a manager from "Microsoft India" called me up to try to reassure me that they were legit. The game was over. I said I had the recording and would report it, which caused him to start swearing and yelling at me. I laughed, hung up, and nuked the isolated virtual machine I had been using during our call.