I had a phone call from an outfit calling themselves “Windows Support Department”. Apparently my machine is doing “malicious” things on the internet and they can help me solve these problems.

That was the spin. I told them I don’t have a Windows machine and they got ugly - calling me a liar that I was “wicked” and “evil”. The thing that bugged me was that they knew my address and told me that people would be round to “sort me out”.

Last time I had such a call, I got to the word “Mac” and they hung up.

The “we know where you live and are coming to get you” bit bothered me, so I called the Police who now have a log of the incident and an incident number. I’ve had robust discussions with callers in the past, but this is the first time such a threat has been made. The police told me that they wanted access to my computer and would hold bits of it to ransom. I told them I knew this as I’d heard about it before, it was the threat that I was bothered about. I was told not to worry. If anything happens again, phone them, quote the incident number and they’ll look to escalate it further if need be.

The only “malicious” thing my computer does on the Internet is not running Windows. Clearly I am denying honest, hardworking scammers an income. Maybe that’s why I’m “wicked” and “evil”.

I had a similar call a couple of months ago, but it didn't get as nasty as yours.

Strangely, they knew I was with PlusNet as my ISP, but didn't realise that I wasn't using Windows. I knew what the deal was and let them do their shpeal for a few minutes, then broke the news to them that I was using Macs - instantly hung up on me! I can't believe people fall for it, but I guess there are some naive people out there who do.

What concerned me most was them knowing who my ISP was, is this kind of info available somewhere?

Just run your phone number (that they've got from the phone book) against an ADSL pre-provisioning speed guide and it'll tell you the line is already activated and the ISP.

Failing that you can probably buy the information from a corrupt call centre worker over in the East (the wonders of outsourcing support to cheap labour in India etc)

Well, PlusNet are making a big thing at the moment about their "Yorkshire-based call centre", though if money's involved I imagine a call centre worker from Yorkshire will accept a bung more readily (as a Yorkshireman myself, I'm allowed to say that!).

Is that. Yorkshire, New Dehli?

ive seen forum signatures (not here) that are able to tell you things like your internet browser, ISP and OS, i wouldnt be surprised if this sort of information were being used to scare people into handing over money

That's most likely Danasoft, and the only person who can see that is you.

I'm glad you called the Police Paul, the authorities need records of this sort of thing before any action can be taken. I would also make a complaint to Ofcom, to see if it breaches their rules on companies calling households (assuming they're actually a registered company).

I had a similar call some months back allegedly from BT - the caller was very concerned, and said they could tell that my computer was full of viruses and spyware and that I may have noticed it becoming slower over time, and my HD filling up.
"Oh noes!" thought I.
So I asked them which operating system I was running and what the viruses I had were.
At that point the 'supervisor' came on the line and started explaining that because my PC was full of viruses, they have an offer for anti-virus software that I can install and it'll make my machine faster.
AV software that speeds up the machine? Astonishing.
I asked if it was compatible with OS X - he stumbled a bit, and then I pointed out that I used to do IT support for a university and he hung up.

:s I've never had any such calls, feeling a bit left out I shall warn my parents though.

I was also advised by the Virgin Media nuisance call line to phone their fraud department. However, their system were down today, so I couldn’t. I’ll try tomorrow.

The Police seemed to know the score with this, which was good. They did offer to send an officer round to speak to me face to face about it, but I thought that was probably over doing it for the moment. 1471 showed no number, so there is little if anything which can be done, unless they really DO “pay me a visit”.

Good point.

Even if 1471 does show a number, it would probably not be theirs. It's trivial to spoof a phone number if you have the right connections. I can simply type any number I want into my PC and call you from it; that includes your mum's and genuine numbers that banks advertise etc.

You can also tell from website logs what ISP and OS someone is using, but you'd need to connect their on-line identity to their real life one. Sometimes this might be quite easy, for example old Demon business accounts pretty much just gave the details away. Otherwise, I guess marketing information is the most likely source.

had these people call me, twice, I don't have a bt line, so they must of got it off tiscali, or carphone warehouse.

anyway, I got a nice person asking me to go onto my computer so that he can show me what problems my computer has emailed them.
first swing ball question. which computer? he sounded really flustered when I said that, but I allowed him to carry on
second question, which operating system? I got a new person after this..

after turning on my machine I asked him to show me what problems my computer has. he told me how to get onto the windows device manager, and then to go onto another thing that showed me all the problems my computer has (cannot remember for the life of me what part of windows this was called, but it showed a couple of yellow triangle !'s)
So far, I know he hasn't done anything to my computer.
then he asked for my ip so that he can take control of my computer, but first i must put my credit card into a website

I laugh. hung up

not many people call me ;'(

This has been attempted with a few people in my work, unsuccessfully thankfully (out of curiosity, were these people Asian-accented types too, Paul?).

I'd love to get them on the line, I'd have a right laugh with them

Doesn't mean it's not logged by Danasoft