Just hang up!

The phone rings. You answer. (Let’s call her) Mary says, “Good morning, this is Windows’ Technical Department calling about your computer.” You immediately hang up.

That’s what should happen! But recently I decided to play along.
Firstly, Mary wants to verify what she calls my “Computer Licencing Security Identification number” or CLSID. She tells me how to run the assoc command and I see, at the bottom of a long list, CLSID\{888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062}. Mary checks the number she has and … it matches my “unique” number. That’s funny—type assoc into almost any computer and you’ll get the same number; CLSID (Class Identifier) isn’t a licence number at all!

Following Mary’s instructions, I look at the “errors” in the Event Viewer. She misinforms me red errors are “already corrupt” files and yellow ones “are in the process to be corrupt”. Help, I have over 1000! Actually, that’s a low number. Windows notes anything that may be useful in diagnosing problems or improving performance. A geek’s paradise, yes; corrupt files, no!

I ask why my anti-virus hasn’t found these problems. Mary transfers me to her senior technician, Martin, who explains they are “very dangerous frozen programs which your computer is automatically downloading from the internet”. Worse than viruses, they block firewalls, corrupt important software and cause security leaks. But I needn’t worry: he’s going to fix them!
But first, Martin aims to scare me a little more by checking my Services. Apparently, these all “have to be in running condition” for my computer to be “healthy”. But some aren’t running … because the “frozen programs” are corrupting them and soon I won’t be able to access my computer at all. Rubbish! Services are simply background programs that run automatically whenever they’re needed, and your computer will be quicker if they’re not all running!

Martin’s final scare-tactic is to use netstat to “find out if your connection is secure”. A list of numbers appears, most of which have an ESTABLISHED status. These, he tells me, are hackers who have established connections to my computer. Again, he’s used a normal windows command—in this case one that shows my (anti-virus, browser, email) programs’ current connections to the internet—and lied about what it does.
To fix these issues, Martin wants to redirect my computer to the “secure zone of Windows” at www.support.me. At this point, I stop playing along because I know this will be the start of my problems, not the end of them. It would give Martin direct control of my computer, allowing him to do whatever he likes to my system. The scam plays out in various ways: they charge for the “clean-up” (getting your credit card details in the process), they lock your computer and charge to unlock it or they install malicious software of their own, essentially hacking in to your computer with your permission!
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So, when Mary calls … just hang up!