As part of my continuing efforts to give prominence to this scam, I thought I’d provide a quick update. The Scam Tag on this blog contains the full list of posts regarding this.
Charles Arthur is continuing to investigate this has recently covered this in a Blog posting: Those ‘PC virus’ phone call scams: the unanswered questions.
One of the unanswered questions that he highlights is how exactly are they getting this information? Several people have intimated that they give out spam-trap contact details whenever they are asked to provide them, so maybe this is a good long-term strategy to attempt to wheedle out the scammers.
Take this example. I am fortunate enough to have my own domain name (JamesWiseman.com). My email account is set up such that all mails sent to @JamesWiseman.com will end up in the same mailbox. So, think of a word, put it in front of @JamesWiseman.com, send me an email, and I will get it.
So, when I sign up for SomeService.com, the email address I give is ‘someservice@jameswiseman.com’. For anything that needs a credit card, or requests more sensitive information, I use something more obscure, but, nevertheless still identifies the company to whom I originally gave the address.
Obviously, not everyone has their own domain, but for email this can be overcome by signing up to multiple GMail or Hotmail accounts (hassle, granted). And what about physical address details? Well, if you never intend to receive mail, then you can always fake it, for example (again using the SomeService company name):
James Wiseman,
22 SomeService Road,
Gondor,
Middle Earth
But what if you do want to receive mail? Well, just pretend you have given your house a personalised name (like those ‘quaint’ Dunroamin house names you sometimes see)
So, your address might look like
James Wiseman,
SomeService,
999 My Real Road Name,
My Real Town
MY8 8PC
Granted, this isn’t going to obtain results quickly, but could well make it more difficult in the long run for scammers to operate effectively.
Other Articles
This is one of an ongoing series of articles that I have written following this scam. You can find them under the following tag group:
http://www.jameswiseman.com/blog/tag/windows-support-telephone-scam/
[...] this blog entry I wrote about my spam-trap email system: My email account is set up such that all mails sent to [...]
Gmail has a clever feature which is ideal for this kind of thing.
Say you have james.wiseman@gmail.com as your address. Gmail will also send messages addressed to jameswiseman@gmail.com, and also to james.wiseman+anytexthere@gmail.com.
So you can then sign up to services with james.wiseman+someservice@gmail.com. If this addressed is ever spammed, you know who shared it, and can easily block it useing Gmail’s filters.
[...] You can read more on my spam trap technique in this article [...]