Fake VM technical call

[R_Khan]

Hi, I just received a phone call from [Removed] claiming they were calling from the virgin media technical team and that my internet was showing errors and they want to help fix it. First they asked for speed test results to which they said my ping is too high at 17ms and my upload should be half my download speed at least so we need to have a look at the errors which are causing the speed to be so low.

She then asked me to run event log on windows on my laptop and then claimed they were all errors due to malware and viruses coming into my network and that they will fix it by giving me the “proper security” from VM. They transferred me to another technical “expert” I played along for a bit, they asked me to type some dodgy email address in….. www.virginmedia420.weebly.com which didn’t work and I challenged the guy about the dodgy email address as it’s not the main VM email address. He claimed it was the technical support page. He then asked me to type another email address in:

bit.ly/vmweeb or something similar I can’t remember exactly but it’s not in my browser history anymore. But this instantly downloaded a zip file named “ROMserver”.

At this stage i stopped and deleted the file (without opening) and called the guy out and he tried to claim it was genuine and said he could give me the account number so I said go ahead and he could only give me last 5 digits or so.

I told him not to call me again and that it’s all a big scam and I’m going to report all of what he’s said to me. 

please be careful with such calls! They made every effort to sound professional and genuine and can easily catch people out!

Thanks

 [MOD EDIT: Personal and private information has been removed from this post. Please do not post personal or private information in your public posts. Please review the Forum Guidelines]

[Alex_RM]

Hi R_Khan,

Thanks for posting and welcome to our community 🙂

I'm sorry to hear you've experienced a fraudulent call, you can find help regarding these here

Alex_Rm

[mikeay]

I've just received a similar call alleging multiple faults on my router, and got as far as downloading ROMserver.exe. When I said I wouldn't run an executable from an unknown source without checking it out first the lady became quite aggressive and said that if I ended the call now I'd immediately lose my landline and broadband. I then said I didn't like being threatened and I was confident VM, whatever its faults, would not behave like this- she promptly hung up. The caller ID on my phone presented it as a local STD number.

No idea what ROMserver might have done (now disposed of obviously) but the call was initially convincing and therefore potentially quite dangerous.

Mike

[goslow]

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@mikeay wrote:

I've just received a similar call alleging multiple faults on my router, and got as far as downloading ROMserver.exe. When I said I wouldn't run an executable from an unknown source without checking it out first the lady became quite aggressive and said that if I ended the call now I'd immediately lose my landline and broadband. I then said I didn't like being threatened and I was confident VM, whatever its faults, would not behave like this- she promptly hung up. The caller ID on my phone presented it as a local STD number.

No idea what ROMserver might have done (now disposed of obviously) but the call was initially convincing and therefore potentially quite dangerous.

Mike

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You did the right thing by not allowing remote access to your device. FWIW, VM don't make unsolicited tech support calls. Anyone claiming this is a scammer.

The scammers will certainly try again to call your number and it will probably be from a different caller ID and maybe with a different story line to start the scam.

Best approach is to leave unknown numbers to go to answering machine or, even better, left unanswered. If you do happen to pick up a scam call, don't engage with them and just hang up. Each time they actually get to speak to someone who will listen to them, it just gives them a reason to phone back in the hope they will eventually connect with someone who will be taken in by the scam.