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On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:15 PM, Julian Hall wrote: > I'm on Twitter (@JulianMHall) and I usually tweet when I've had one > reminding people that *nobody* will telephone to say you have a virus, least > of all Windows which is a product not a company, and asking them to RT it. That's great, though I think they tend to say they are from Microsoft, not Windows. And in many cases they don't even say who they call from, or they call from BT, or from some vague company. And some ISPs and some banks do contact their customers when the latter are infected with malware. Usually not by phone, but it's not to be excluded, and it's not necessarily a bad idea either. Another problem is that some of these scams do only a few things that are strictly illegal. Misrepresentation usually (claiming to call from Microsoft, or to be Microsoft certified) and possibly making false claims about infections, but when I once managed to make it past the payment stage, all they did was run a few free tools. Vastly overpriced, sure (I "paid" £89), but that part isn't illegal. Though of course what the FTC did was great. And as I receive more and more reports from non-English speaking countries (but the phone calls still being in English), I do think they've getting less successful in the Anglophone world. Martijn. PS for a bit of a laugh, go to this site (after removing some spaces from the URL), scroll to the bottom and see how the payment page is more "secure" :-) pcoptimizers . co . uk / askpay_form.php?amt=89&plan_name=One+big+scam -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq