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steven522 · 07-22-2014, 09:27 AM

So my home phone rings last night and I see the caller ID shows "Out of Area" and a 305 area code. I know it's a telemarketer of some kind and lately I have been trying my best to keep whomever may be calling on the line as long as possible. I figure that if the goal of the telemarketing system is to reach as many people as possible, every minute I can detain the caller from moving on to the next victim means a hit to the marketing system's efficiency.

To my amazement, I actually received a call from the AAMMYY scammers. The heavily accented person on the other end let me know he was from Microsoft and all of the little "send error message to Microsoft" notices that pop up on my computer finally came to their attention and that he was calling to fix the problem. I managed to keep the guy on the phone for nearly twenty minutes before he finally hung up on me.

I figured these people are looking for the most tech-un-savvy people they can find so my best bet was to play as dumb as possible (which isn't really too much of a stretch for my meager acting skills).

The general flow of the conversation went along these lines:
- I was asked to open my web browser. I finally figured that one out.
- I was asked to go to the AMMYY.COM web site. After several heavily accented and extremely slow and over enunciated repetitions I was finally able to type in the website address.
- I was asked to click on a button to install something. "I don't see a button", "What do you see?", "A long list of search results", "Does one of them say 'remote desktop'?", "Not that I can see", "Let's try typing it in again", "OK."
- When the scammer lost hope of completing the above step he decided to try something else: "Let's try typing in to the address bar", "The what?", "Do you see a line at the top of the screen that starts with 'http'?", "Where?", "Top of the screen", "I don't see one", "Are you sure?", "I think so."
- Eventually he tried a different tactic: "Do you know where the spacebar is on the keyboard?", "The what?", "The big long key with nothing on it", "Yeah, I see it", "Do you see A, L, T next to it?", "The A, the L, and the what?", "No, a single key with A, L, and T together", "Oh, yeah, I see it", "Next to that is a key with four little boxes", "No, I see a key with an apple on it", "Apple? Are you on a Mac?", "Yeah", "No, I need you to go to your Windows computer", "Windows? I don't have one of those."

At this point the scammer finally had enough and hung up on me.

07-22-2014, 09:27 AM	#7923
steven522 binomial: homo legentem Posts: 1,061 Karma: 25222222 Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Alabama, USA Device: iriver Story HD; Archos 80 G9	So my home phone rings last night and I see the caller ID shows "Out of Area" and a 305 area code. I know it's a telemarketer of some kind and lately I have been trying my best to keep whomever may be calling on the line as long as possible. I figure that if the goal of the telemarketing system is to reach as many people as possible, every minute I can detain the caller from moving on to the next victim means a hit to the marketing system's efficiency. To my amazement, I actually received a call from the AAMMYY scammers. The heavily accented person on the other end let me know he was from Microsoft and all of the little "send error message to Microsoft" notices that pop up on my computer finally came to their attention and that he was calling to fix the problem. I managed to keep the guy on the phone for nearly twenty minutes before he finally hung up on me. I figured these people are looking for the most tech-un-savvy people they can find so my best bet was to play as dumb as possible (which isn't really too much of a stretch for my meager acting skills). The general flow of the conversation went along these lines: - I was asked to open my web browser. I finally figured that one out. - I was asked to go to the AMMYY.COM web site. After several heavily accented and extremely slow and over enunciated repetitions I was finally able to type in the website address. - I was asked to click on a button to install something. "I don't see a button", "What do you see?", "A long list of search results", "Does one of them say 'remote desktop'?", "Not that I can see", "Let's try typing it in again", "OK." - When the scammer lost hope of completing the above step he decided to try something else: "Let's try typing in to the address bar", "The what?", "Do you see a line at the top of the screen that starts with 'http'?", "Where?", "Top of the screen", "I don't see one", "Are you sure?", "I think so." - Eventually he tried a different tactic: "Do you know where the spacebar is on the keyboard?", "The what?", "The big long key with nothing on it", "Yeah, I see it", "Do you see A, L, T next to it?", "The A, the L, and the what?", "No, a single key with A, L, and T together", "Oh, yeah, I see it", "Next to that is a key with four little boxes", "No, I see a key with an apple on it", "Apple? Are you on a Mac?", "Yeah", "No, I need you to go to your Windows computer", "Windows? I don't have one of those." At this point the scammer finally had enough and hung up on me.