Age of Unity

Today I got another call from someone claiming they're the Microsoft hotline and my PC sends errors. They'll use (usually faked) national numbers from your country but speak english with a horrible accent.
You can expect if a company like Microsoft calls you, they use a native or at least trained speaker of your language. Also they don't call you unless YOU have them contacted before.

This time they claimed to have an ID of my Windows PC, so I told them to tell me that ID so I know they're real and no fake. They dictated me some numbers (888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F) and told me where I can find that number on my PC (open a CMD box, type "assoc <Enter>").
I first checked what this command does: it lists every file extention association your Windows installation knows.

Close to the end there is the line ZFSendToTarget=CLSID\{888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062} - the callers told me the first number packs are identical to those they dictated to me, so that's my PC's license number.
A quick Google search revealed this whole line is in the association list (and it's identical) on every single Windows PC, so definitively NOT linked to a license or PC ID.

Also, in the results were some articles with warnings about fake Support Hotline calls using that ID as proof.
When I told the caller I found an article from 2012 about the exact same numbers they gave me and they cannot trick me to hand out any CC numbers or install software based on that, they just hang up. Without saying goodbye .

Anyway, be warned: even after at least 8 years this is still used for tricking people to buy some sort of cleanup software or install malware which can be removed after buying another software pack.
Whatever they trick you to do, they're just after your credit card details.

Normally it's advised just to hung up if such calls come in but that doesn't prevent these guys from calling you again at a later time.
I hope by telling them they cannot trick me into doing stuff (because I cross-google what they tell me), they have taken my number from their "potential victim" lists.

Thanks for the heads up!
Can't say enough to watch out for those people.

We get 1 call/month in average from a funny English speaking guy trying to fix a problem on our pc's we were not aware of.
At work we had someone scammed for 400Euro with this. (and I work at an IT company)

Sanae.

I mentioned this call and some details in an open Twitter dialogue I have with a local Police channel I follow. They were quite surprised this "assoc" method is still used since it should be known for at least 8 years I found out.

Also they use CallerID spoofing, so if you get a call from a number in your country and there are people speaking a "funny english" (unless you live in a country where english is a common-used language) you can be sure they want your best - your money.

Too bad they called my mobile phone - I once noticed my DSL router had two numbers logged for the same call - one number I had on my display and another number with the real Caller ID. Though, I'm not sure if this still works with VoIP .
There are legal reasons to send an altered CallerID to a customer, e.g. to hide a clerk's direct number and show the companies' general number instead, but unfortunately the CallerID can be changed completely and I don't know ANY telephony provider which suppressed complete alterations.

Hi all,

there are lots of videos on youtube of people spoofing the spoofers don't know how many are actually true but very funny.

Ya, I know a few of these vid's, but unfortunately I neither have the knowledge nor the software to bring these ***holes out of their business. I just know enough to cross-check what they want me to do and give them a if it's too obvious.

new record : 35 min they tried to install the remote control program on my "windows 95" pc.
The person i spoke with prob wasnt even born in 95 and had no clue..........
in the end he adviced me to upgrade to windows 7 and he would call me back the week after.
He never got back to me, which was a pitty, wonder how he would have dealt with the fact that my "425" only had a 250mb HD and could not install win 7......