I just got off another phone call with another “PC Repair” scammer. So much fun! This is why I don’t put myself on the do-not-call register. (Though mind you, would that even work against these kinds of scammers?)


Yes sir, I am calling from Microsoft. That is not a cow you hear in the background.

I’ve had this kind of call a few times before. Mostly, the conversation ends within a minute because their line is so dodgy. I also get a long of suspicious hang-ups that bear the hall-marks of long-distance, so I wonder if these aren’t also scammers recoiling at a non-elderly male voice?

But when I can talk to the scammers, I’ve previously tried stringing them out, frustrating them, as per this previous encounter. But these usually end with them hanging up out of frustration, or the bad quality line dying spontaneously.

Today, I wanted to see their tactics, so I followed the instructions fairly efficiently. This time I got to the end-game. I took notes the whole way. Read on to see what methods they employ, and how I delivered the bad news I wasn’t going to actually pay up.

The Caller

It was a woman this time. Again, a very strong accent from India or thereabouts. Poor English (though I can’t criticize, she speaks better English that I do Hindi). Terrible quality phone line — it actually dropped completely due to “battery” problems (read about that further below).

Now, the line quality was so bad I’m not sure about this following part. I thought I could hear kids. I thought I could hear her talking to her kids, kind-of saying “shush I’m on a phone call”. When I asked her what was going on she was adamant that she had been listening all the time (despite requiring me to repeat myself).

My guess: she’s a stay-at-home mother trying to make a few bucks by scamming with her mobile phone. The picture we have of call centres full of scammers is not accurate, I think. A more accurate comparison would be the “work from home” scams we see here in the West. That’s just my hunch. Interested readers can go research that for themselves.

Does she know she’s scamming? I would say she would know. She might not know much about the technical stuff she had me do, and how it’s all crap. But she claimed to be from “Windows Service and Maintenance Support”, implying an affiliation with Microsoft. And to believe she’s actually working on the part of Microsoft would require a lot of gullibility.

The Game Plan — Non-Technical Summary

They call you, they hope you have a Windows PC. Most people do. They then show you benign things on your PC to “prove” things. They “prove” your PC is full of problems. They “prove” they are a legit company. They “prove” your warranty has expired.

That’s all lies of course. To anyone non-technical, they are doing the equivalent of this:

Hello sir. Do you have a sofa? Sir, your sofa is in the living room correct? Ah, that shows we have legitimate knowledge of your sofa — how else would we know that? Sir, look under the cushions. See all those crumbs? That’s very very bad. Now sir, look underneath your sofa. Is there a one-hundred dollar bill stapled to the underside? No? That means your warranty has expired. Let me guide you to our credit card payment page on the Internet…

Do they actually offer support if you do pay? Maybe. If so, it’d probably be rather sub-standard. But it matters not. The pretense on which they get you to buy — that your PC is riddled with errors and lacking warranty — is total fabrication. That’s scam enough.

The Game Plan — The Technical Version

This is a complete run-down of what happened.

  • She calls. She addresses me by name. Do I have a Windows computer? Yes? Well it’s sending error reports to them (presumably, they mean Microsoft).
  • I ask her to wait while I get my laptop. I’m worried because previous callers have hung up after waiting even modest amounts of time. She’s still there when I get back.
  • She has me run Computer Management via the Computer entry on the Start Menu (right click, Manage).
    (Yes, I pulled the “your left or my left” gag again when asked to look at the left of my keyboard for my Windows key. I know I was trying to not string them along this time, but it’s too good a gag not to do. Like the last guy, she assured me it was my left.)
  • I am guided to the Application Errors section of Event Viewer. My goodness, look at all those errors! She lies, telling me they are caused when I go to dodgy sites (though she certainly doesn’t use such breezy vernacular). She asks me what sites I go to. “Microsoft, and my kids use Disney.” I lie. She wonders why I am going to Microsoft, am I affiliated? No, I assure her, I go there “because you can get updates there, did you know?” Not wanting to spook her, I acquiesce and admit that other people use this PC. We conclude that they, or those damned kids of mine, must’ve gone to a bad website.
    I try to be ironic and claim that it’s awful that people would breach my trust and scam me, but the meaning is lost in translation and she thinks I’m talking about her (guilty conscience?). Not wanting to spook her, I back off.


Scammers are apparently not familiar with irony.

  • She then guides me to the Prefetch folder via the Run menu. I wasn’t familiar with this folder, so I had to stall her while I looked it up, telling her my computer was slow (which she used as “evidence” of how screwed-up my computer was). Apparently prefetch is something of a cache to improve boot times. Read more here.
  • In the Prefetch folder there are five RUNDLL entries. She lies, telling me that there should only be one. This is more “evidence” my computer is stuffed.
  • I am then guided to run the Command Line via the Run Dialog. She mis-informs me that “cmd” stands for “Computer Management Diagnosis”. (Really, it’s just short for “command”.)
  • She has me run Assoc at the command line. Assoc is a tool that allows you to show and modify file associations. But in her universe, it is… well I don’t remember exactly. But right near the end it shows the line:
    .zfsendtotarget=CLSID\{888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062}
    Which is simply information telling the operating system how to deal with compressed files. Read more here.
    (Lucky I was using my laptop, not my actual PC, otherwise this entry would not be near the bottom thanks to dozens of Visual Studio entries starting with an underscore.)
    She (correctly!) identifies the long number as a GUID. Now, this number is not different across different machines. But she pretends it is, and reads it back to me as proof that she is legitimate.
    I get her to expand on this. You (the reader) are probably familiar with the crash dialog where it asks if you want to send information to Microsoft? She’s pretending she’s been getting heaps of these from me, and that this number is part of what’s being sent.
    She’s clever, though — I suggest that she could read other things out to me, but she says that she only gets “some” information.
  • She then says she’s going to transfer me to a technical support person, but phone connection is lost! Disappointed, I unpause what I was watching on the telly over lunch.
  • Ah, but not all is lost! Apparently smelling blood, she deems me important enough to call back. She says she lost connection because of a battery. I ask why she’s using a mobile phone. She says she isn’t. I ask what kind of land-line phone uses a battery. She avoids the question.
  • I had turned my laptop off. Back on it comes. While we’re waiting, she engages me in clumsy friendly conversation. What do I do for a living? I know it’s risky, but I tell her the truth — I am a software engineer. She says that I must know about these kinds of problems, then. I say I do, and that I’ve found the steps so far very interesting. My voice is dripping with sarcasm. I guess it doesn’t translate because we continue on.
  • It’s at this time I ask what company she is with. In a round-about sort of way, she says that she’s with the “Windows Service and Maintenence Department” and implies (but doesn’t say) that it’s an official part of Microsoft.
  • She has me return to Computer Management. This time I am going to the Services section and looking at the Routing and Remote service. She wants to know what state it’s in. I tell her the truth — it’s “Disabled”. This service is for advanced networking things, you can read the details here. Very few home PCs would have this turned on (and if you did you’d probably not be the type to fall for this scam in the first place). She lies, telling me that “disabled” means my warranty has expired! Hence all my problems.
    (Which, if you think about it, is not a nice scenario. A warranty isn’t about stopping bad things from happening, it’s about reimbursing you in some way if they do. Let’s take the analogy to cars. Imagine the outrage if your car warranty ran out and it suddenly became more dangerous to drive. Well, the same is true of PCs. If they started letting viruses and other malicious code in just because the warranty ran out people wouldn’t be happy. Why not call it something other that “warranty” since they’re making the whole thing up?)
  • Here we get to the pointy cash end. How many years warranty do I want to buy? I ask for five. But on further conversation I decide on a lifetime warranty. We go to the site — I won’t link it (not because it seems dangerous, but because I don’t want it gaining any prestige with Google and the like by linking to it).
    www (dot) adamspcsupport (dot) org
    Hmm… strange place for a Microsoft representative to send me to. Sadly I didn’t think to argue this at the time.
    It’s a bland site of stock imagery and Flash animation.
    I click on the lifetime warranty and get redirected to a third-party site that is capable of facilitating credit card transactions. (That’s not dodgy in itself — PayPal is a legit example of such a thing — but this is just a generic-name equivalent who doesn’t care if it gets a reputation for dealing with shysters.)
  • The caller tells me she is happy to answer my questions if I am uncertain. I ask her how does this warranty get tied to my PC? Think about it — how is my computer supposed to know to turn on its magical warranty protection? She assures me that Assoc GUID will do that. Not that I was told to enter that GUID anywhere on the credit card page.
  • Then, I’m done. I tell her she’s a scammer, that all those things she showed my on my PC have absolutely nothing to do with problems, and that I should know. I’m a software engineer, remember? She assures me that this is not a scam. I tell her to drop the company line and just talk to me like a human. Why does she do work to purposely scam people out of money? Is she trying to make an extra bit of cash? Talk to me like a human.
    I was hoping that she’d tell me why. I don’t exactly think people like her are greedy. Desperate may be a better word. There are some very poor people in India. Alas, she just hangs up. For once it wasn’t because of the bad connection.

Convergent Evolution of Scams

The dolphin and the shark are both aquatic animals. They have a very different heritage — one mammalian the other piscean — but thanks to convergent evolution they have ended sharing very similar physical forms.

I believe the same is happening with PC repair scams. The repair scams are quite young. They started out blunt, guiding users straight to remote-control or other malicious software. Now they are more advanced, spending valuable minutes convincing a slightly-more-scam-aware public that this “isn’t a scam” because of all these “errors”.

What are they converging with? The much older scam “animals” — the ones that don’t rely on computers — psychic cold-reading, Scientology personality tests, homeopathic placebo effects, religious plate-passing, and many more. These scams have long known that you get the best results if you offer some “evidence” that they are needed.

PC repair scams will die out as people get computer literate, or even just more scam-aware. That’s good. The sad thing is that the very same people who learn not to buy warranties over the phone from a stranger will still be visiting psychics are putting money in the collection plate.