If you were an auto mechanic and someone called you on your phone and claimed there were problems with your car, what would you think about that? Let’s say this person had you walk out to your car and look under the hood. Then over the phone he tried to point things out to you that were in bad shape. Then to top it off (if cars could plug into the internet) he wanted you to allow him to access your car remotely.

Sounds like fun doesn’t it. Well today an Indian guy we’ll call Peeing Dog called me straight from India. It was a pleasant 18 minutes of his time I wasted, here’s how it went.

Me: Hello? Peeing dog: Yes this is Peeing dog from India and I’ve recently become aware of some computer problems you are having. Me: WTF? Oh yea what kind of problems?. Peeing Dog: Well if you have a moment I can show you first hand. Me: Well ok what do I need to do? Peeing dog: Are you near your computer? Me: Yes it’s right in front of me. Peeing Dog: Ok do you see the Start button in the lower left hand side. Me: Yes oh yea I see it.

Peeing Dog: Click Start and then do you see a box that you can type into? Me: Yes I see it. Peeing dog: Type eventvwr.msc into it and then click enter. Me: ok I did it Peeing dog: OK click Custom View and then Administrative Events. Me: Ok got it. Peeing dog: Now up on top I want you to click View and then sort by Level. Me: Ok I did it, wow look at all the errors (sounding really surprised but not really when errors and alerts are common in the event viewer)

Peeing dog then tried to get me to go to support.me which is a Logmein.com gateway that I am very familiar with. Logmein would allow Peeing dog remote access to my computer, which I wasn’t thrilled about. I was starting to get bored with the whole deal and I had stuff to do, so I let Peeing dog talk for another 5 minutes. I asked Peeing dog where he was located and he said India.  I said that’s a long way away from me, why are you calling me? He said he was alerted to trouble on certain ISP’s and I was on one of them, so he called me.

I asked Peeing dog what does he plan on charging for his service today since I didn’t think he called people to help them just for fun. He said it would be $29.99 after he logged into my computer and showed me all of his neat tricks for fixing the errors. I asked what website he was affiliated with and he told me http://askpcwizards.com/

Finally after more verbal gibberish from Peeing dog I told him I had something to say. I explained to him that I was a computer technician and I work on computers every day. Peeing dog breathed out a sigh and said something to the effect of Oh… and immediately hung up the phone.

After the Phone call from 448-583-01014 (yea I know too many digits) I decided to see what I could dig up about these low lifes.

The domain is private at 1 & 1. Who ever is behind this name proxy3135236@1and1-private-registration.com

If someone calls you and tells you that your computer has errors, please just hang up on them.

Derek

– Update 4/3/2012  –

I’ve received another phone call trying to scam me, and I was sitting next to a business owner today as she received a scam phone call. This is happening a lot, please say no to any unsolicited computer repair phone calls. There is a reason this is continues to happen and that is because it continues to work. These scammers are getting a paycheck because of it and they probably won’t stop.