This is a really serious problem reported in the NZ Herald this week and isn’t that far off the HP staff scam.
Aggressive foreign scammers are again targeting New Zealanders, this time by urging them to change settings on their computers in an attempt to obtain personal information.
Within the past two days, hundreds of people have received telephone calls from people claiming to be Microsoft employees or from IT companies in Dubai and NZ warning that their computers could be infected with a virus.
The caller – a man or a woman with a foreign accent on a poor line – asks for passwords, which they claim they need to get rid of the virus.
In some cases the caller has become aggressive and defensive when challenged by those who don’t believe the story.
Police say anyone who receives such a call should hang up.
Read the full article: Ring, ring: It’s your con artist speaking
They just called us. A very professional woman obviously reading from a script. When I explained I was going into a meeting and would call her in the morning so could I have her number she hung up on me.
I have now been rung twice once by a female reading from a script approx 4wks ago and I told her to naff off and then again just the other day by a male also foreign. I asked him if ‘he had any conscience at all and told him that he should be ashamed of himself scamming details or money from innocent unassuming people who could not afford to lose their hard earned living and he still tried to play the innocent and I ended up hanging up on him after giving him a piece of my mind. Scum of the earth I say!!!