:)

Good work, these scum need to be messed with!

hahaha......nice. We all know what a cat does to a mouse before killing or eating it. It was fun to see Emsisoft playing with this rat Mr Z hahaha.....
By the way, your software is simply superb! it detects malwares and blocked me accessing sites which are dangerous and trying to install some malicious programs without my knowledge.

On the other hand, it's blocked me from running some items I would like to sandbox, but quarantines the object before I can run in one. That's quite annoying.

You can change the default behavior of what Emsisoft Anti-Malware does with malware it found under "Protection"/"File Guard". Per default we will automatically quarantine malware detections and display an alert for PUPs. You can switch the behavior for malware detections to alert as well, which will give you the option to decide what to do if a malware file is found.

oh that was excellent reading. totally enjoyed this. I have had these scammers call me many times and I just keep playing dumb and tell them, why do you keep calling me, I do not own a computer, and they would hang up. a friend said they got very obnoxious with her when she told them not to call again, the scammer said they would call her more often.

Did MR Z and his fellows get caught, or are they still scavenging on others?

It is not like he did anything illegal. People willingly paying for "nothing" is not the crime, it is marketing and proving, that someone actually did lie on purpose is very difficult and if he is in different country, it does not matter anyway. Getting a new teamviewer ID is a matter of secs.

but it could be considered as fraud. he is asking for money under false pretenses.

Well, the other issue being that unless the scammers were complete bonheads, they are in another country (commonly India). Trying to call the police on them just ends up being a waste of time and effort.

I love reading these kind of articles, very interesting :)!

Back in the first year of Wired magazine, they had articles on phreakers and hackers. Those was some very interesting articles. I miss those professionally written tales. Over the years I subscribed and resubscribed, but nothing ever came again from Wired, which went over those types of people.

Bravo, MCS!!!

Too funny!! Thanks for the entertaining lunch break :)

Our pleasure :)

I'm in Oregon USA; a few weekends ago, while I'm working online at home, somebody calls our VOiP internet line, tells my wife they're from Microsoft and that we need to turn our computer on as it's been sending requests to MS for service and they need to remotely access it; my wife calls upstairs for me; I ask a few questions, and am told they can't see my PC yet...I tell caller that's the way it's going to stay until my phone tracer completes on their line...suddenly, no more caller on other end, slammed phone. As the call came in on an internet Magicjack line (which "needs" several modem ports responding 'closed' so it can ping itself back), obviously some scammer with access to internet phone numbers was simply assuming if you have internet you must have more than a phone line...our actual PC setup is fairly well-stealthed itself due to modem/phone issue, and the caller/hacker couldn't ping it through modem. I wanted to mention this as it involves calling a number not generally visible to the public, like a business or residential line with yellow/white pages listing.

Thanks for sharing Dan! Great idea to get them to hang up! Was that the last time they called?

It was Saturday August 16, 2014, sometime mid-afternoon USA PDT; no such calls known before or yet since. BTW, I use Emsisoft Emergency Kit sometimes as second-opinion for myself, emergency detection should others need it...update it at least once daily, and for me it's the best at finding PUP.

Thanks Dan. Glad to hear you're so happy with the Emergency Kit! Positive feedback always makes our day.

Google "virtual machine". Looooove this. Love Emsisoft! :)

Thanks Dee :)

Totally cool. I got one of those guys, and a woman as well. The woman kept saying, "Listen to me, listen to me, you have to listen to me!" I said, "No, I don't." and hung up. The man had me going for a bit -- stupid, I know -- until he wanted to connect to my machine. I am pretty tech savvy and know way better than that.

Nice job, Rita. Do you remember the reason they gave for calling? Was it similar to Mr. Z's "your computer is sending errors to the Windows server" routine?

My trick is to have an old keyboard next to the phone and tell them nothing they tell me is working they get very annoyed after about 3 hours they can hear the keys going but cant work out why nothing is working

This is exactly why I just renewed my Emsisoft subscription - good work and loved the article! Now if we could just get you onto robocalls about "my credit card" -lol!

Yes, help us with robocalls. Not just for credit card loans but political calls, surveys and charities!

Either ask them to add you to their "DO NOT CALL LIST" or hang up, add to block list. Problem solved.

The "Do Not Call List" was written by politicians so they exempted them selves and their lobby buddies. And if you hang up on the robocall, it logs you as unanswered and will continue to call until you allow them to complete their call. The same as if you no not answer but your answering machine answers. Their computer knows the difference between an answering machine and a human. Block list works on my computer but not on my telephone.

Find a phone number that gives a Not in Service message.
Record the tone sequence preceding that message, and add it at the start of your v-mail/answering machine message.

Great article - hopefully many people read and pay attention to it. With such prolific access to information these days, it seems people make less use of it.
A quick mention, also - despite being mentioned in "Mr. Z's" notpad ad, CCLEANER is a legitimate and extremely useful piece of software written by the fine folks at Piriform.com (no, I don't work for them - but have effectively used their software for many years). It's a good addition to have with Emsisoft Malware protection as (among other benefits) it can keep the temporary directorys in Windows computers free of junk that collects there and by default is never cleaned otherwise - a favourite/common place for malware to hide!

Keep up the good work, mates...and keep yer powder dry!

now, if emsisoft could do something about telephone marketing...

Anti-Malcall?

Living here in the Benidorm, Spain area we had some of those calling up elderly english speaking people by using local phonebooks with indian accent. So we told the people if they were calling and starting to talk about Microsoft Windows to interrupt them immediately by telling them that we just installed triple glass windows against the airport noise so we don't need there service anymore. And it worked, they quickly hang up and never call back again because it's useless to talk to somebody who does not know what XP or WIN 7 is.

That's hilarious!

Good work Emsisoft. If just about every people could read this it would be perfect. I hope you have enjoyed your chat :)

You didn't really paid these idiots, did you? I'm joking! :p

Emsisoft and Bitdefender are the best!

Thanks Lyubo!

Awesome! nicely done

Best I've done is keeping them on the phone for 45 mins. Played it straight except I was sitting at a Linux box, oddly everything they asked me to do didn't work.

Bravo! Love it when these cyberspace creeps get what they deserve.

Thanks for the good laugh. I've had 3 of these phone calls in the last three weeks!!

My mom fell for something like this. They went in and screwed her computer from accessing the net. I had to rollback her computer, and warn her about crap like this. I can imagine my wife and mom falling for this kind of crap without me there to help.

It's important to spread awareness so that people are warned

Funny how "Mr Z" went on the defensive when he found out that he had been 'found out'.
The also get quite upset when I tell them I don't have a computer or that I have an 'Apple'.
BTW, I wouldn't be without my Emsisoft.

It was funny how he got all defensive. One of my favorite lines from the Notepad conclusion was: "if i m scammer ther z no need top col u, i can scam you without you calling you as well i show u th every thing, what z going on your"

Translation: No, I'm not a scammer, but if I was I'd be so good at it I wouldn't even need to call you - I could just hack into your computer.

Seriously, something a child would say (but probably with better spelling).

The basic problem is that nothing stops these scammers, apart from if someone bombed their offices (which I'd cheerfully do).
We've had up to 6 or 7 calls a day from these people - they never stop, even when we get angry with them and hang up.

Now, if we have time, we play them along - but they still keep on calling! Day after day! You'd think they'd have some system to blacklist the numbers that are wised up to them, wouldn't you?

What we do:
1. I play the scammer along, asking all kinds of dumb questions as scammer runs me through the "viewing files" steps and me telling him I can't see it, until scammer says in frustration, "can't you see that on the screen?" - and I say, "No!".
Scammer says, "why not?" - and I say, "because I DON"T OWN A COMPUTER!"

2. Wife believes in appealing to their morals. She asks them, "how would they feel if someone tried to steal from them, by telling lies and scheming?" (this is the daughter of a police superintendent talking).
In every case, they strenuously and continuously deny any lies or wrongdoing. Either they're totally bereft of even basic morality, or their training must work on employer power over their family, or something similarly evil.
3. I use the old standard tricks. "I'm sorry, I can't hear you, can you repeat that, this is a very bad line!". After repeating themselves a dozen times, they get tired of it, and hang up.
Then there's the variation, "I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! You have a very strong accent! Can you speak more slowly, and more clearly?"
After they've repeated themselves a dozen times, sounding more and more like the village idiot, they hang up - convinced that they're dealing with the village idiot!
4. Play the law enforcement part. Use a deep authoritative voice. "Do you understand that you're speaking to a computer fraud specialist with the FBI?" (even when you're in Australia, or the U.K., this still works great). They hang up instantly.
I thought this one up, after reading a true article about an FBI computer fraud specialist who had a credit card scammer call him, and try to scam him! The FBI guy nailed him and hung him out to dry!

If you want some real entertainment, find the Professional Pilots Rumour Network forum at pprune.org and click on the "Jet Blast" forum, and find the Nigerian scammer threads started by a guy named "Capetonian".
Capetonian specialises in leading Nigerian scammers and Russian bride scammers on useless trails involving false Western Union invoices for their payments, and generally leading them on, and wasting their time on a large scale. Some of the threads are better entertainment than movies or TV shows.

Great advice on some "defense" strategies :) I don't think they care about any moral values though because they must be well aware of their wrong doings

They called my friend recently and he had them on for an hour. Same scenario. What they're after is the PAYPAL account, that they'll have you make if you go far enough. They will swear to get it, and the proof is in the audio file posted here...
https://app.box.com/s/0yluy...

Notice the swearing from 21:30 to 23:50 and again at 32:24 to 33:29.
The scammers were not happy.

I frequently get them calling me, I do one of three things ask for their name and address of their company that usually gets an automatic disconnection from their end, just slam the phone down as soon as they tell me who they are or say "F*** Off Scammer and then slam the phone down.

Option 3 makes for a much shorter chat log :)