AMMYY Scam

I decided to have some fun with them and I propose anyone else who gets a call does the same. After all, they're used to people hanging up on them and shouting at them so that doesn't bother them in the least. I pretended to be doing exactly what they wanted while I was actually making dinner. I'd occasionally return to the phone and say, "sorry, my computer is running really slowly." Or "hang on a second I think the baby's crying." After 17 minutes the phone went dead and they rang back. I managed to keep them waiting for another 11 minutes before they hung up again. That's 28 minutes of their time that I wasted which probably saved about 28 other people from getting called. So that's your target people. Let's see who can beat 28 minutes!!

Having read about 40 or 50 replies, it always amazes me that anyone takes these clowns seriously for more than about 100 milliseconds.  THEY ARE CROOKS.  Yes, your event manager is always going to be full of stupid stuff that has no effect on anything.  All you have to do is have a printer busy or a cranky RJ15 connector, and your event log will look like the start of World War III, but that is always true.

I do not give an online crook any more respect than I would a pickpocket or a shoplifter.  I will harass them, I will try to make them realize they are WORKING for a criminal [which may be the best strategy of all], but I do not humor them for even a second.  I am not polite.  What's the point?  They are trying to steal my money or my identity.  THAT is not polite, and does not deserve reciprocal politeness.

The same thing happened to me except I played 20 questions with him, gave him the def, of what a "Global Catalog Server" was, since he was saying his GC Server is showing my PC is infected. My event viewer showed over 6,000 "errors" several were from the printer and other errors from an Ethernet that was not secure and the little dog playing with/bumping it. I decided to play his game through VM, and after a while was ready to call it quits when I reminded him that I was running Windows Server CORE 2008 and he did not notice that Windows 7 was on screen.( I was studying for MCITP).  This is when I asked him how long he has been MS Certified. He told me 3 years. The call ended when I asked for his Certification #. I don't really have the time to go into great detail but if you want the details of these calls Mark Carnahan did a GREAT job of explaining which is why I TOOK THE TIME TO REPLY TO HIM.

For those of you who get these calls or any like it, please call Microsoft back your self at a number from Microsoft's site or even better take it to a local Pro you trust to help the smaller businesses struggling to survive.