Inside the Robo-call Call Center

The latest AARP newsletter (yeah, I'm old) has a fascinating tale of a white-hat who has made a hobby of penetrating, spying on, and sabotaging robo-call call centers, particularly those that focus on tech support scams ("We have detected a problem. Let us connect to your computer and fix it"). As a piece of reading, it drags at times, but I still think it's worth a look. (I think it drags a bit because the author was thinking of the majority of his target audience, which contains the folks most likely to be entrapped by this particular scam, as opposed to a more tech-savvy readership.)

Here's an excerpt:

Quote:

Then one day in 2018, Jim's evening forays took an unexpected turn. A tech support scammer called from India and went through the normal spiel, but then he asked Jim to do something unusual: to log in to the scammer's computer using a remote-access software program called TeamViewer. Later on, Jim found out why: The developers of TeamViewer had discovered that criminals in India were abusing their software, so they temporarily banned its use from computers initiating connections from India. But there was a loophole: It didn't stop scammers from asking U.S. and U.K. consumers like Jim to initiate access into computers in India. Hence, the scammer's request. The voice on the phone talked Jim through the connection process, then told him to initiate a switch sides" function so the caller could be in charge" and look through Jim's computer. Presented with this opportunity, Jim acted quickly. Instead of switching sides," he took control of the criminal's computer and locked the scammer out of his own computer. Lo and behold, mild-mannered programmer Jim Browning had complete access to all of the scammer's files and software. And he was able to see everything the scammer was frantically trying to do to regain control.