I've just put the phone down to the Ammyy Scam picked the wrong guy here lol - of course I played with them first, oh common, I had to. Ammyy is a 'log me in' or 'team viewer' type service and the person on the phone says that they are from tech support and have had some errors from your machine - or on a theme of that - and asks you to google Ammyy and log in - oh how I fired up my tools vm, hee. Ammyy scam similar story
Well I got in touch with a telecomms guy I know from when I did a job for a telecommunication company at their earth station which handled all UK's overseas calls and he put me in touch with someone who could sanction some action. The long and the short. If you receive a call such as this for tech support don't be afraid to question them. It was easy for me to spot it straight away as it would with most people, if in doubt ask them to ring back and speak to someone else and do not give out card and bank details. To the guys that rang me, the call has been traced and the local police and telecom company over there were notified.
Sickem, Woof! My mother has been the target of things like this. 95% occured after she joined AARP. Lottery scams to credit offers to bogus charity groups.
Asian voice just told me they had received 52 warnings that my computer was running slowly. I told him it wasn't. Anyhow - he told me to open up IE and type AMMYY into google. Did so - and second suggestion that appears is AMMYY SCAM. I let him rabbit on while I studied this page. I told him I was reading it and he went ape - told me to look at AMMYY admin. I said, no, scam page was interesting reading. He told me to ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ off and put phone down! His colleague called almost immediately pretending to be outraged at his swearing! I told him I didn't believe a word of his ~ Snipped as per TOS ~. He hung up. At least he didn't swear... Microsoft needs to hunt these guys down.
just had a scam phone call about AMMYY half way through the conversation as i was following their instructions on line i suddenly felt uneasy about it and asked them to phone back later on when husband would be in The gentleman's reaction was to ask "who's computer is it"!!!!! I had little alarm bells going off in my head so I pursaded him to call back in an hour. i looked up on google WHAT IS AMMYY and was directed to lots of web addresses but thankfully picked this site and read the report on the scam so i was ready for the call.....Lets just says i told the gentleman on the other end of the phone what i knew about the scam....strange....he didn't want to talk to me any more So I must say thankyou for all the previous posts
Crapola eh I like the way they have saturated google with links when searching "AMMYY" The first "AMMYY is a scam" link was on page 2 from Meriadoc: go team The next links to scam sites is page 4 : AVforums, tech support guys etc. If you search "AMMYY is a scam", LOL, the goog pages are on fire ! ( wilders is second link. )
These guys could be easily caught. Its just that the FBI for whatever reason is choosing not to pursue them at the moment or they are and we just don't know about it yet. If they are pursuing them it may be a long time before they make any arrest. Sometimes surveillance is conducted for years before making any arrest. A lot of times these criminals are not pursued simply because of the the price tag that comes with building a case, and prosecuting them. Its just not at the top of their to do list. There's bigger fish in the sea. Also in many cases these criminals operate out of countries that will not cooperate with the US. If their Government doesn't care enough to take action then they will never stop. I had a similar incident, and I reported it to my local FBI office. These people appeared to be operating out of the US. I was informed to report it to my service provider so that the number could be black listed. If these people were known to be using the money to fund terrorism you better bet they would not last long in any country that cooperates with the US.
I just had some lady call me and tell me to go through all of the steps. When I started typing in the site, ammyy scam came up with a link to this thread. As soon as I saw that, I quickly closed out of the AMMYY thing, after giving her the wrong number. I may not be as computer savvy as I'd like or as savvy as some of you guys on here, but I can smell a scam. Especially when the number comes up as "1110", "218", "411" (Which came up as Directory Assistance x.x), "1117", and "1406". So, I suppose a question is, what should I do if they call me again either tonight or tomorrow? And, does anyone know how/where they get their information from?
Hey guys I just got scammed by the Ammyy people and let them install there stuff on my computer, I know I should of known better. how can I try to get rid of this mess off my computer?? please help fast, does this mean my creadit card information is at risk?
The people extracting a payment from you for a service that was never needed for a problem that didn't exist are being fraudulent and committing a deception. If you gave them your details contact your bank and tell them you've been a victim of this online scam - they should tell you what you need to do with your account now but if not press it, hopefully if you have forked out a payment you may even get some money back. Beware though if you have as they may ring back and see what else they can fleece from you.
Hi folks……….this scam is still going on - Jan14th 2011. I’d not heard of this but knew straight away that is was nonsense so I led the guy on to see where it went. They are no longer asking people to Google ammyy, I was told to type the full web address for ammyy.com directly into the browser address bar. I had no idea what ammyy was so I quietly told the guy to go s***w himself and then I found this thread. By the guys accent I first assumed it was just another Indian call center but I can’t be sure what nationality he was. I had real trouble understanding him and literally had to get him to repeat some things 4 or 5 times. I was going to email Ammyy Admin to give them the heads up about this but they must be aware of it already. Watch your six. Bill
I got the call just to-day. I smelt the stink right away, only mistake I made was to confirm my name and address. I just wish I had been forearmed with the information I now have. I had never heard of them before. I also had the greatest difficulty understanding what he was saying. I told him a few times I wished to terminate the call before he eventually did. Out of decency I hadn't the courage to do the right thing and set the phone down.
I had a call this morning, and was suspicious as my computer works fine, and I don't visit dodgy sites. Why, you ask yourself, is someone phoning me out of the kindness of their heart, and offering to help with something. Well the answer is of course, they are not! So beware, this scam is still alive and kicking. I stopped following their request when asked to enter the ammy web address, it was all taking too long and I wanted to research this before taking it further. Supposedly he is phoning back at 6.00pm, we will see! I am not great with computers, but I can smell a rat. These guys should be hounded, less aware folk would be taken for an expensive ride.
I got the call this afternoon. An Indian sounding person who said his name was Eric(??) said that he worked for a Windows Support company and my computer was reporting errors over the Internet. I figured immediately that this was a scam but played along. He wanted me to go to the -www.ammyy.com- site and he would give me further directions on how to resolve the errors. I got him to give me a phone number (02032865123) and acted concerned that I had problems. I told him I would visit the site and that because my phone wasn't by the computer, I would have to call him back. He didn't want me to hang up and said he wasn't reachable on the phone but would call me back in a few minutes. At this stage I decided to let him know that I knew he was scamming and he hung up. I called the number he gave me (above) and another Indian sounding person answered and went through the same spiel as the other person. I told him that he was unable to tell that I had errors on my computer but he insisted he could but wouldn't name any explicitly. I then accussed him of scamming but he insisted that it was all legal. I asked how he got my phone number and he said I had sent it in an email form. I hadn't. I told him I would be notifying the Police about his activity and he wanted to know why because I hadn't given him any money and he still insisted that he wanted to fix my computer problems. I gave up and hung up on him.
I would wager that it's still illegal to try and deceive someone in the UK still - that's great that you were smart and managed to get a phone number it collaborates your story and will make things a little easier. Please now think about making a complaint.
Yep second time i have been called. Once 2 months ago immediately after rejecting an Indian salesman for a new account with utility supplier. Had spoken to him for half an hour and when he left without my signature very unhappy and rude - five minute later i received a call from him using the ammyy scam. I know it was him. He was just as rude when i rejected the idea of him gaining remote access to my PC telling me I was ******* idiot. Just got another call 20min ago. Was ready this time. Due to last attempt our town has notices in all major PC stores warning people about the ammyy scam. This time i acted as PC illiterate as i could so it took them an hour to get me to the ammyy web site. They must have thought I had never seen a PC I acted that well. This guy made me type the address directly into my run box where you go for command prompt, obviously so i would not Google it. From five minutes after he called me, right from the start i had another web page with a story about someone who had been scammed by them. When he asked me what was on the page so he could direct me to click the install for the remote access software I started reading him the scam report. He became deeply concerned for me and asked why I was on this page and if I had ever received such a scam call. I said I was sorry I don't know much about PC's and had just goggled ammyy.com and this is what i got. He preceded to reexplain that i had to type the address into the address bar or the run box. I couldn't hold it in any longer laughed my backside off and asked him if he really thought I would give him remote access to my PC, and how many people have you got so far with this immoral crap!! He got angry, told me I was an anus hole and that 99.9% of Australians are stupid idiots. I replied " I think 99.9 percent of the whole world can be idiots at times, that everybody has there moments and I'm sure your having one right now". He cursed some more then became silent. I asked him nicely "Don't you want to help me with my PC anymore?" Then he hung up. I'm sure w w w.ammyy.com is a scam in itself. The numbers don't answer and I have sent a few emails since first time and have had no reply. There has to be somthing we can do about these people. It is a well known scam, between all of us we have phone numbers that have answered, a questionable web site etc... Let's put our heads together on this one and get them!
Hey Everyone, I've been bugged by this and similar for several months now. Sure, all the "authorities" want you to report any such scams and when you do they can't do anything about it. I've tried contacting the local police, scam watch, department of fair trading (I'm in Australia) and there's very little they can actually do and I still get the calls. This time I thought I'd go along with it as I am using CyberForceField on one of my machines and there's no way they can install anything on my machine while it's running. I just wanted to see what they try to do and most importantly if I could get any info about them. When they called, they: Said they are from "Technical Maintenance Support" from RJPC Support, gave the URL: -rjpcsupport.com-; Said their name was "Rose Smith" in a heavy indian accent; Gave me a phone number: 088 1200 580; Said they are not associated with Microsoft, but they support windows; Had most of my name and address and phone number although it was partly erronous; Made me check my event viewer proving that there was malware on my system; Explained that these are not from viruses but other malicious code that's why my antivirus doesn't protect against it; Tried to get me to allow remote access by downloading some software. CFF prevented it and I played along as non-tech-savvy to see where it would lead; Tried to get me to go to ammyy.com and download other software. Again, there were errors generated (as expected) and I played along and they kept insisting I should run the exe file. Got me to open up wordpad and click on help. I don't know why. It was weird and my battery power was running out and just shut down as I was doing this. I "freaked out" thinking how the bad, bad viruses have taken over my computer... *OMG* am now speaking with "Mark" one of the "Senior Technicians". He has just reconfirmed the number: 08 8120 0580 (That's Western Australia, South Australia & Northern Territory) I'm still trying to get some sort of address in the hope of "bringing my computer in for repairs." -no luck yet. So far I haven't led on that I'm not an idiot and I think they are super desperate to get my business. I tried the number and I get an voicemail account with no identifying information. Left a funny message. Best would be to get their computer info when they remote into a machine and see if Anonymous or someone can hack into their systems or something since no-one else is able to do anything about it. I'm open to any suggestions anyone out there might have - this is getting really annoying now and it bugs me knowing that people out there are getting sucked into this and I want to do something about it. Cheers! Aramel
Thank you Aramel, because of posts like yours I also avoided the scam when they rang me (I'm also in Aus, QLD to be exact). I have scoured their website for any information about them but the only information I could pull was their Paypal details which I have now reported to be used for fraudulent payments to Paypal and also followed all information about them that I could to the ACCC. The only way scams like this will end is when people (mostly the elderly) are made aware of scum like these people. Funny enough when I told them I was reading about their scam on the phone the woman (sounded like she was about 14 mind you) told me to go to hell. Fortunately I jumped in and told her to go ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ herself fast enough before she hung up People like this are pathetic, at least burglars have the guts to actually do something where as these idiots just sit there calling people all day and trying to trick them for money. But anyway. Lets all post a lot of replies so this is No. 2 on the Google results. That will make people more aware
So ... last night about 8pm UK time my phone rang ... Someone says: I presume in an Indian accent ... "Hello I am (used a western sounding name) from BT technical support (UK's largest ISP). I am ringing to repair the problems with your computer, our tests show it is currently reporting a 60% file error on our system. We need to perform technical tasks to elimate the problem" ... I said no it isn't, to which he replied "Please go to your computer and follow my instructions" ... he kept mentioning how if I did as he told me I should see a popup confirming the problems with the computer. The guy sounded like he was actually in a call center and he was very confident in his manner about getting me to my computer. I told the guy to go multiply himself. So it ended there. What I didn't know is they'd called earlier and my housemate confirmed to them we used BT internet. Luckily my housemate was busy at the time and just hung up on them lol. Shows they're determined to use that info for another time. Predatory stuff.
i just got a call from a HINDI GUY at AMMYY named "Bob Garrett". he ran me through his spiel and tried convincingly to get my information to which i folded... i didnt immediately suspect anything until i thought about it and replayed the conversation in my head... when i answered the phone he asked for me by name...wth? i have a paypal...rather i HAD a paypal acct... couldnt figure out how to close it so i quickly called my bank and got my acct. # changed. do not trust anyone who claims to know anything about your computer when your sitting right in front of it and notice not a thing wrong. i was a fool and fell for their scam but fortunately they will not be getting this fool's money. i am forever scanning my computer - everyday and several times a day. i was scared. i panicked. but thank god i realized what was up before any damage was done. on another note, when BOB told me to access the ammyy.com, i instead went uninstall utorrent.org which i believed was the problem. while i was uninstalling said torrent, BOB asked me what i was doing... i claimed my computer froze. a few seconds later he asked "what are you doing? why is it taking so long?" ... claimed i was still frozen.... had i been more aware at the time i would have google for the ammyy scam firstly before allowing that asshole any information or access. the number that appeared on my phone is 1-760-705-8888. i called the number and it cannot be accessed. if anyone from that number or any other contacts you for any information DO NOT FALL FOR IT!!! these ppl are cruel, malicious beasts with no conscience. something needs to be done about these bastards...if the authorities refuse to stop them it is up to us. ps "BOB" said i need to 'remove viruses from all the layers of my computer', then purchase 'microsoft virus removal', hard disc platter recovery software', a 'licensed version of firewall' (helloooo i have anti malware and firewall already installed!!). also he told me to purchase a 'ready start version of avast' and if possible to hire a microsoft engineer to 'fix the problems'. with the exception of the hiring a 'microsoft engineer' the programs would cost me a grand total of $186 canadian dollars. as an after thought, he also asked if i have a cell phone to contact me if im out...thankfully i had none to give him otherwise he'd be pestering me there as well. he also claimed that if i don't fix my computer it will crash in 3 hours pps i was reading several of these postings to my sister and she told me that she got a cold call from these ppl as well...several months ago, claiming that her computer was infected and immediate action needs to be taken to rectify the issues... needless to say that she was more than a bit confused by that seeing that she hasnt had a computer in almost 4 years.... @ Keyboard_Commando "The guy sounded like he was actually in a call center and he was very confident in his manner about getting me to my computer"... i noticed that to a degree as well. though my guy distinctly sounded as though he was in a very large warehouse. also i noticed a constant beeping amongst other voices in the background. lastly i would like to mention to each and everyone in here that if you ever receive a "courtesy call" from your bank or service provider i will advise to to immediately hang up and call back whomever the caller claimed to be working for the verify the information.
I just received a call from an guy with an Indian accent saying he was calling on behalf of the Internet traffic Contro (ITC) and there were corrupt files in my junk mail and on my computer that were affecting servers and websites. He said that warning messages were sent to my computer and when I asked for another one to be sent he said that he couldn't do that. When I asked for a call back number he said that he couldn't give out cell numbers. To talk to a supervisor I was to hang up the phone and the supervisor would call. There was a lot of voices and noises in the background as well. He "instructed me" to check the messages he sent. To do this I was told to right click on my computer and go to message events. To my knowlegde this will show you Windows errors. After a few more minutes he said that he could fix the problems by going through a website called ammy. I googles ammy and it is a remote desktop site and as soon as I saw that alarms went off. I found this thread and my suspicions were confirmed. Thanks all. Now how do we get these guys shut down?
I was just called by these guys. They went through the same thing telling me my computer was sending the messages about errors. Unfortunately for them they didn't know who they were calling I immediately booted a Windows XP VM setup as a make shift honeypot. From there I allowed them to connect and listened to there crap. The entire time I was able to log a handful of ip addresses and phone numbers; They called my VOIP line which I set up with PBX software and essentially made my own "call Trap". This took a few hours but was well worth it. I kept asking for supervisors and they would call back with a different number each time. IP addresses changed from each connection too. Next time I will record the conversation and post it here.
Wish I saw this before I posted my other reply. As I said above (right above) I set up a call trap and honey pot. I managed to get quite a bit of information from their IP address and port scans. That said I am not a black hat hacker any more and I only use hacking for security (pentesting/IT) that said 3 of the 4 IP addresses hosted vulnerable services (some old unpatched windows XP boxes and 1 running a vulnerable Appache server). If someone else were to use this and attack them its fine by me I however do NOT condone it (for legal reasons )