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Virgin Media Technical Support Scam

blok
On our wavelength

I got a call from them today. This is how the conversation went:

Scammer said they were calling from Virgin Media. That they had detected a problem with my broadband and that I've been receiving a lot of attacks. That they were going to help me fix the problem!

They wanted:

1. To know how many lights were switched on, on my router - I guess that tells them which model router I have.

2. To know how many devices I normally have connected.

3. To know what type of mobile phone I use, Android or IOS.

4. Me to access the command prompt (Win key + r) and to type in, "eventvwr". That would have brought up Event viewer. They wanted me to do this, so that they could show me how many "attacks" I was having.

5. They then wanted to install AnyDesk to connect.

6. When I started to query the legitimacy of the call they read out my clsid, and said there was no way they could have this without being genuine.

I spoke with three different people during the course of the call. All of them had a very heavy Asian Indian accent. 

Virgin media should do more to make customers aware of this type of scam.

6 REPLIES 6

-tony-
Alessandro Volta

the scam is as old as the internet in one form or another - how do  you want VM to make customers aware other than their statement that they DO NOT contact customers in this way - if you take that as a fact all calls that are said to be from VM are a scam

its not VM's problem - its down to you to apply the lame logic as you would if your bank rings you in a similar way and asks for the account number and pin -how would you react to that

____________________

Tony.
Sacked VIP

blok
On our wavelength

I'm saying that VM need to be more visible/structured in how they DO conduct technical support.  At the moment technical support is nigh on non-existent.

If Technical Support were more visible, customers would be better able to distinguish these calls as being bogus and out of the standard operating procedures (of which there appear none).

Just my opinion.

 

Anonymous
Not applicable
do teach people to recognize scams and phishing attempts.
Its not any companies fault if people can't recognise scams.

Whatever VM do the scammers will change and people will still get tricked. It works because people are allowing it to work

-tony-
Alessandro Volta

scams come in all shapes - sizes and by many methods - some are difficult to spot at first look - others easy - take the raft of emails for norton - mccaffee or bitcoins that are filling inboxes at the moment - they fall into the easy class

as does this one - VM make a statement here and in other places that they do not ring customers for reasons such as this - what more do you want them to do

if you want a debate about VM's CS then thats a completely different subject

____________________

Tony.
Sacked VIP

tragicmike
Tuning in

Hi Blok, thanks for posting about your experience. I have just received the same scam call (although they talked about number downloads instead of attacks). Just leaving my experience here in case it's of use to others.

** Play-by-play **

Initially, the scammer said that she was calling about our internet connection being slow and not working properly. This is true - we've been having a lot of issues with our connection (I imagine this was a lucky guess). As with Blok, she then asked about the number of lights on my router and the number of connected devices. I threw her a curve ball by mentioning work laptops (which evidently made her uncomfortable because a lot of companies will prevent you from running as admin). She then asked me to turn on my PC, which really set the alarm bells ringing. I asked why that was necessary and she riffed off something that just didn't make sense, nor did it answer the question: she tried to say that there had been too many downloads on our connection (unlikely) and that the problems it was causing with the router would also cause faults in any device connected via WiFi (I'm not aware how this could be possible).

I wanted to know what exactly was their goal, so I pretended to comply with the next few steps. Like you, she asked me to turn on my computer and to tell her which is the button next to the left hand Ctrl (which I presume was so that she knew whether to try Windows or Apple instructions). She told me to press Windows + R, (i.e. to launch apps as administrator). The scammer then asked me to enter a command (I think the same one as Blok) and to tell her what I saw on screen. Unfortunately, I had to stop playing along at this point as I didn't know what I'd see on screen.

I asked her if she could confirm my postcode and VM account number and she hung up.

** End of description **

Like Blok, the caller had a strong Indian accent.

I also agree with Blok that Virgin could do a little more to notify the community about these kind of scam phone calls, because I know several (mostly elderly) people who have fallen or could easily fall for a scam like this. I haven't received any emails warning of these scams, nor have I been able to find any statements from VM that they don't ask their users to do anything like this (online searches bring up a few VM community threads, but I doubt the most vulnerable people would trust anything not explicitly said by VM themselves).

Side note: I have received many genuine calls from Virgin Media over the last 3 years. I have had a lot of trouble with my account, and CS always choose to call me rather than email (despite me making it clear that I can't pick up the phone in the middle of the day because of my place of work). It's therefore disingenuous to assume that "all" calls from VM are scams.