Comantra (telephone scammer) has its MS partner status revoked

[Tom Thomson]

Had a couple of those last year and again this year (and was only in the UK 4 months last year and 3 months this year; that suggests that I would get about 6 such calls per year if my UK phone was always answered).  The caller was clearly working off a script without a clue what she was talking about (given a complicated method of invoking event viewer, I said something like "you mean open event viewer?"  and was met by blank incomprehension; the first time round I followed to the next stage - tell her what warning messages you have got and harmless warning messages will be said to indicate a major catastrophe).  After a certain amount of clowning around had produced yet more evidence of complete ignorance of all things to do with PCs I told her that her call was clearly a scam which I would report.  When I reported it, the police didn't want to know, of course.  They never do, do they?  And of course Trading Standards have no clout on callers from India, because the Indian authorities won't cooperate in any meaningful manner.  Subsequent calls got a quick hang up - I could waste their time but that would also waste mine, so I didn't bother.

Tom

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukcrypto-bounces at chiark.greenend.org.uk [mailto:ukcrypto-
> bounces at chiark.greenend.org.uk] On Behalf Of Peter Tomlinson
> Sent: 30 October 2011 18:01
> To: UK Cryptography Policy Discussion Group
> Subject: Re: Comantra (telephone scammer) has its MS partner status
> revoked
> 
> Had my first experience of one of those phone calls earlier this month
> (my computer had sent them a message, etc). But I was very busy and
> simply told the caller (lady with South Asian accent) that it wasn't
> true and her organisation wasn't genuine (not quite as politely as that)
> and put the phone down.
> 
> Peter
> 
> On 16/09/2011 15:21, Marcus Williamson wrote:
> >
> > Over the last year the UK media has run a number of stories about fake
> tech
> > support companies making unsolicited calls to people in the UK, such as
> this one:
> > http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jul/29/computer-phone-scam
> >