Ammyy Scam

Discussion in 'malware problems & news' started by Meriadoc, Sep 1, 2010.

  1. Jerseygirl

    Jerseygirl Registered Member

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    I've been receiving calls from a "1400" number on the caller ID. No one is ever there so I hang up. Tonight someone was there and said he was from Microsoft(yes, Indian accent and all) saying that my computer was sending out "fatal error" messages and they were calling to help fix the problem. He asked me would did my last repair and I told him to which he promptly said that that person wasn't trained in Microsoft programs and wasn't authorized to do the repair work. I asked him would his repair would cost and he hesitated, then said "nothing for the diagnostics" and then the price would depend on what they found. He asked me if I'd been having trouble connecting to the internet and I said I had been so he knew he had a good fish on the line. He asked me to go to my computer and then asked if I used Internet Explorer. I said I used Firefox but he told me to bring up IE. As luck (his) would have it, I couldn't make a connection so he told me to us Firefox. Then I was to type in ammyy.com and that wouldn't come up either so he had me hold for a "better technician". After a long wait, someone came on and had me turn off the computer. After a five minute wait, turned it back on. (During this wait time, he was talking to someone, or the whole room, in some Arabic language or something like it. Wish I could have translated.) He then told me to bring up Google Chrome and type in the ammyy address, which I typed in the Google search block, not the upper block. As luck (mine) would have it, after the search results came up, my eye caught the second one listed was about the scam and then I knew for sure what was happening. He had me go to the ammyy website and click on the free download for something but while I was waiting for that to come up I went back to read more about the scam. Doing a quick scan of all the posts, I told him I wasn't comfortable doing this and was there a number I could call him back on. He said "sure" and a "supervisor" got on the phone and was going to give me a number. I said that I didn't want to go any further and he said they just wanted to help me fix my computer. I said if I indeed have a problem I would be the one initiating the service call and hung up. Right away the phone rang again with a different 4 digit number in the caller ID. Before I even said "Hello" someone said "we just want to help you fix your computer" and I hung up again. Phone rings again and I had no intention to answering but it quit after only 3 rings. Hope that's the end of it, although probably not but at least I know now not to answer.

    I'm glad I was able to stop the call when I did and to not have given them any personal information. I should have been more suspicious right away when I asked him what it could cost. I called Microsoft once a long time ago and they were going to charge me just to talk to someone, although that may not be the case now.

    Glad I found this forum. It's been really helpful.
     
  2. drdave545667

    drdave545667 Registered Member

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    I just want to say Thank You for this forum!

    I got a call today from "Windows Care", sounds legit, saying all the same things. I have computer errors and they will try to fix them for me. The guy had a heavy east Indian accent and had very little patience.

    He asked me to go to -www.windowscare.tk-, and what a fancy looking website. Full of pictures of ppl wearing suits and very business like. He asked me to click on "Get Support" and then IE asked me to allow ammyy.exe. This is when I got really suspicious. I allowed it, stupidly, then he asked for my ID# which I did, again stupidly. A window pops up and he told me to click on the box to Remember my Information, NOT GONNA HAPPEN. I question him hard on this and he keeps giving me the same answer, It's used for our techs to fix your computer, but he's getting increasingly angrier. I did a quick google search of AMMYY before advancing and found this forum. I RIPPED INTO THIS A-HOLE and then hung up.

    I'm in sales so I usually go a little easier on telemarketers because I know its a sh*tty job so I went along a little bit with this guy. I'm doing a full scan of my computer now JIC. I can't believe the effort some people put in to scam others! If they used any of that energy and drive towards making this world a better place to live we wouldn't have ALOT of the problems that we do. I just hope karma catches up to these people!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 7, 2012
  3. Danutak

    Danutak Registered Member

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    The scam moved to Canada already, I got that famous call in the morning. Thomas Watson was his name, in heavy Indian accent. I introduced myself as Marlyn Monroe. They did not want me to call them back:D
    They were very upset that I do not want them to give the access to my computer:D
     
  4. JoeFredW

    JoeFredW Registered Member

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    Canader I reckon !
    Heh heh !...oh my ! :D :thumb:
     
    Last edited: Jan 18, 2012
  5. x942

    x942 Guest

    ***Just sent all of this to the anti-fraud centre (Canada) at info@antifraudcentre.ca****

    Italics I added and were not in the e-mail.


    It's a compilation of EVERYTHING in this thread! Maybe a mod can attach it the first post so new users can see it when coming from google/bing/etc. This should sum up the information gathered thus far.

    I still (unfortunately) can NOT post any of the audio or video I have captured as it is being (slowly) turned over to the RCMP I am hopping e-mail the anti-fraud centre will help move things along.
     
  6. Triple Helix

    Triple Helix Specialist

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    I get about 6 to 10 of these calls a year I just play games with them and I have caller ID and when I call back it says that this number is not in use! Bone heads think I'm going to let them connect to my system? But really I do feel sorry if anyone gets caught up in this scam! :mad:

    TH
     
  7. knoodle

    knoodle Registered Member

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    UK
    I wish I had read about this before as I am one of the foolish people that has just been caught out with this scam and boy am I angry with myself.
    Dont know how but they contacted me by phone, told me who and what they were and coincidently the computer I was running was very slow and has been crashing a lot recently and got sucked in with the whole scam.
    The so called "nice" woman asked me to click start, run and enter ammyy.com, the rest you all know, charged me £20 watched me put in my card details online but took £198.20 with western union and somehow changed my password as well on the visa verification.
    No chance of getting money back it seems.
     
  8. DonVa

    DonVa Registered Member

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    My sister and Mother both been phoned with similar scams recently.
    I am computer savvy so was able to warn them it was all nonsense and assure then their PC was fine. They were very persistant.

    Today I wa scalled by the very ammy scam as detailed on this thread.
    I played along for the hell of it!

    It went like this:

    First guy with a heavy indian accent claims to be from Microsoft and insists I have seen a pop-up recently (he meant one of the Microsoft Error reporting Dialogues asking to report the error to Microsoft). I tell him not, but he says it would have been once only and may have been from my family.

    They received this error report from my PC at Microsoft and this is a courtesy support call in response.

    I play along and the guy gets me to open the even viewer in computer management under Administrative Events and marvels at the nnumber of errors reported there.

    Buoyed by my response he puts me on to a 'second level support technician'.
    (In other words the cold calling help has got me hooked for the more senior guy to step in!).

    He too marvels at the errors and tells me that's why he is calling to fix them..my pc has malware and internal problems..

    He then gets me to run CHKDSK and tells me to look at the results which shows how bad it is. He seems to think I will be impressed by the fact he knows it will report it is running in 'read only' mode. However he is temporarily blind sided when I tell him the output says "Windows has checked the disk and found no problems". He ignores that and tries to get me to type ammy.com to go to his site and download some checker tool at which point I stop playing along.

    I come clean and tell him I work in IT and know he is talking complete &%**%..

    I tell him it is perfectly normal to find errors in the event log and my PC is just fine. I also tell him errors in the event log do not mean I have malware so what's his evidence.

    He tries to say he is a Microsoft Certified Engineer and as I am not he knows better than me. So I ask him if he knows what WMI stands for as I have an error for that. He can't answer but challenges me to tell him - so I do.

    I repeat this for other errors and he hasn't got a clue. I ask how he knows I have malware when he doesn't even know wht the errors are ( he waffles on about internal errors).

    I won't bore you with the rest but I basically ridiculed the whole thing including how he just happened to single me out from the millions of Windows users in the world and also just happened to have my telephone number too! I also predicted the rest of the scam (download software under my admin context, pay for software I don't need and/or download a trojan and steal my card details in the process)

    Depsite being busted on so many levels he still tried to scare me with the disaster that would be befall me if I didn't fix the errors with him!!

    I was just laughing by this point (and could hear some laughing in the background too). I was just mocking him and telling him how 'terrified' I am but that I was quite sure everthing would be just fine if I put the phone down.

    He finally realized he would get nowhere and gave up..

    I then saw this thread when I googled it so wanted to add my experience.

    To anyone who is ever called. DO NOT TRUST THEM. DO NOT GIVE ANY DETAILS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. I WOULD BE MORE WORRIED IF THEY ACTUALLY DID KNOW I HAD A VIRUS.

    IF THEY REALLY COULD SCAN MY PC REMOTELY AND THEN HAVE PHONE NUMBER AND ADDRESS AT THE READY - THEN I REALLY WOULD BE WORRIED (I AM NOT SURE THE CIA HAVE THAT POWER!)!!

    This link is all you need to know:
    http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/online-privacy/msname.aspx

    PS:
    Would you believe it! I hadn't even finished writing this and got another call!!!
    Same scam different person - I didn't play along this time ..grrrrr...
     
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2012
  9. Tarnak

    Tarnak Registered Member

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    I have yet to get the call!... I must be immune. ;)
     
  10. J_L

    J_L Registered Member

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    I thought they'd be shut down by now.
     
  11. JoeFredW

    JoeFredW Registered Member

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    Location:
    Canader I reckon !
    Y'all wanna put them out of business ?

    Don't hang up.

    Keep them on as long as possible. :cool:

    Click the link in my sig for some examples of how to do this.

    Hanging up on them just frees them up to scam more people, make more money and stick around that much longer :D
     
  12. DonVa

    DonVa Registered Member

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    Give it time.. your turn will come.:)
     
  13. banseabhag

    banseabhag Registered Member

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    Location:
    USA
    I have not gotten the call but a friend just did. We are in Alaska and I had not heard of this before she alerted me. She sent me here to get more info on it, just in case the phone rings. Thanks
     
  14. esprit

    esprit Registered Member

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    Location:
    France
    I'm ashamed to say I fell for this scam up to a point. Yesterday, just before midday, I was called by a young woman saying she was from Microsoft and that there were a lot of infected messages coming from my computer. The number displayed on my telephone was a UK number: 0044 02032860882. She was sweetly concerned and stressed the seriousness of the situation, computer could crash irretrievably at any time, very important to deal with it immediately, etc., the refrain that has now become so familiar to readers of this admirable thread.

    Her name she gave as Stella Gold - she already knew mine, as did the "technician", Nick Wilson, that she passed me to. As it's not unusual for bona fide people working in jobs like this to take an English-sounding name to make it easier for clients, so this didn't make me suspicious. They both had strong accents, probably Indian (but could have been Pakistani or Bangla Deshi?), but as I'm familiar with the accent I only had to get them to repeat a few things. Nick explained that he could fix the problems and offered a number where he could be called back which was the same as the number above. Moreover, he asked me to make a note of his name and his employee ID number, MS2641. (Note the MS.) When I asked, he said he was calling from London.

    Now here's the thing. I live in France. The situation must be serious for them to call me here, I thought. So I closed Firefox, opened IE, typed ammyy.com into the address bar, and you know what happened next. I hadn't looked at Event Viewer for such a long time, I'd forgotten it was nothing but warnings and red error alerts. Nick was very concerned. Did I download a lot of music or videos? No. Well, not to worry, he could deal with it. First, he'd just check that my technical support contract hadn't expired. Oh dear, there would be a charge for activating the advanced services. Huh? How much? That will be £99 and will give access to technical assistance for the rest of my life. Ker-ching! The penny finally dropped. Oh, no! I can't afford that, I'm a pensioner. Oh, you're a pensioner. So perhaps I can get a pensioner's discount for you. Just a moment, I'll have a word with my supervisor. ..... Yes, I'm happy to tell you that will be only £59! For life, no more problems, etc. Up came the screen with £59 filled in, waiting for my name, address, and card details. At this point I said I would call him back to verify the phone number and would continue from there (with no intention of doing so). The poor chap said I had to do it now or never and was incredulous that I was prepared to leave my computer in this dreadful state. 'Bye, Nick! The whole thing took just over an hour.

    I turned off my wifi and searched for "ammyy". The only result was a slim folder in Program Data called AMMYY which I deleted. It contained three files: hr, hr3 and settings, each 1k in size. However, I couldn't find any others. If anyone knows the names of other files I should look for, could you please let me know?

    Now, where would they find my French phone number? PC World in Leeds, where I bought the computer last summer? The only other place would be Facebook .....

    OMG! Of course! That accounts for members of the same family being contacted, elderly people being targetted and individuals being called several times even after being unco-operative. This scam could be carried out by small cells of mates working from home - sound track of a call centre playing in the background, trawling Fb pages and finding friends of friends of friends of friends of your friends who are defeated by the Fb security rigmarole which is now positively baroque in its complexity.

    Well, that's my theory. Plausible, you think?
     
  15. deeman94

    deeman94 Registered Member

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    Location:
    red deer
    I myself received a call regarding this SCAM and my father in-law attempted to accept the services then called me for my credit card # well I lost it...to say the least.
    I talked to these ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ myself and it was clear and present from the get go it was a scam. I managed to get a number from them after playing along after I refused to give any info they quickly realized they weren't dealing with a less than computer savvy guy they got very rude and hung up on me.

    But that's that's ok because I kept calling them offering a virus protection of my own "and let me tell you they weren't pleased" PERFECT!!!!

    So I pray that you don't fall victim to this scam but if you do not sure how good it is to you but the number I got is 1-213-784-9596 by all means call these guys and Harrass the crap out of them!

    signed My Turn.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 13, 2012
  16. Jack98414

    Jack98414 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Feb 18, 2012
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    Location:
    Norwich
    Re: Ammyy Scam 16/02/2012

    Hello to you all.
    My name is Jack ,I recive a lot of phone scams on my phone from -WWW.AMMY.COM-.
    This last call i got i did manage to listen to the back ground noise as this man was trying to bully me in to doing as i was told by him .I cought him off guard by being nice and asking if i could ring him THIS IS THE NUMBER WHICH HE GAVE ME,But with out the country code which i found by researching on line.
    +91.0803282256.

    I think the only way to get any satisfaction and justice from all this is to do what i have done .
    THANK MICROSOFT,BILL GATES AND HIS TEAM FOR THERE HELP SITE (-www.ammy.com-) WHO SELL AND TAKE MONEY FOR THERE MICROSOFT PRODUCTS.
    I did this by filling in one of there many questionares they ask us to fill in and participate in to improve there systems at Microsoft.

    I think you will find that the reaction from Microsoft ,Bill Gates,etc will be worth the effort.
    OH i all most for got the noise in the back ground while this man was talking sounded as if he was in a VERY LARGE Warehouse with hundreds of others doing the same phone calling to scam others.
    The people who phone are all ways of INDIA dilect whith there Broken English.

    TAKE TIME TO THANK MICROSOFT FOR AMMY.COM ACTING AS
    AGENTS AND SALES FORCE.
    Kind Regards
    Jack98414
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 18, 2012
  17. crofttk

    crofttk Registered Member

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    Eastern PA, USA
    Re: Ammyy Scam 16/02/2012

    1) There is nothing relevant to this thread at ammy.com
    2) Ammyy.com and the owners of the site and the tool it provides have little to nothing to do with perpetrating this scam.
    3) Microsoft has little or nothing to do with perpetrating this scam.
    4) This scam is perpetrated by predatory criminals who have no credible relationship to Microsoft or to those who provide the ammyy admin tool. They simply use Microsoft's name to try to establish credibility and abuse the ammyy tool (with their victim's unknowing consent) to gain administrative control or visibility of your computer and financial details.

    Use the knowledge in this thread to protect yourself and others who could benefit from the knowledge.
     
  18. leslieisking

    leslieisking Registered Member

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    Location:
    England
    if you gave them access to your computer before realising their intentions , could they have downloaded all my personal stuff like banking passwords that i keep stored in files so that i dont forget them?
     
  19. parsec

    parsec Registered Member

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    If I were you... I would change every password from a clean machine.. just to be on the safe side.
     
  20. Keyboard_Commando

    Keyboard_Commando Registered Member

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    Yes.

    There are crawler type programs that can search through your drive for sensitive keywords, passwords locations, etc. They could easily install a keylogger and steal sensitive data. Expect the worst.

    Change the passwords on any accounts you're worried about, and preferably using a different computer, or better still by phone.

    HERE is Ammyy's response to these scammers - and how to disable Ammyy.

    Like Ammyy official response says, scanning your pc with Malwarebytes especially, and whichever Anti Virus you have is advisable too.

    And remember, Ammyy isn't the bad guy here, it's a legitimate free tool. The scammer is the crook.

    Maybe it's worth having that Ammy link made a sticky here.
     
  21. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

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    That's a good idea.
     
  22. Madmom

    Madmom Registered Member

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    United States
    This scam is still alive and well. Received a call from an Indian guy with a thick accent. Told me he was with Microsoft and they were getting emergency messages from my computer! Then he told me to look at my event log and said look at those warning labels! Do you see those? I said, the most recent one is September 2011, why are you calling me so late? He bravely soldiered on and directed me to get on the Ammyy web site and to tell him my ID number. He asked for it repeatedly. He was also surprised that I didn't have Windows 7 or dial up internet. By this time I had verified this is a scam, told him so and hung up. Phone # on my caller iD was Unknown Name 9-1777.
     
  23. Noob

    Noob Registered Member

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    LOL, i wonder how they look for your number guys . . . :rolleyes:
     
  24. Tarnak

    Tarnak Registered Member

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    I am unlisted. ;)
     
  25. Noob

    Noob Registered Member

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    Wow lots of new members have registered due to these issues. :eek:
     
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