You have a virus... and you just paid them...

cherrymama · 1 year

I spoke with a gentleman who did the same thing, and when it didn't work he preceded to enter in all 8 of his other credit/debit cards trying to make it work. Then he was mad at me because his computer did not come with anti-virus software preinstalled.

HoochCow · 1 year

I used to work for a major bank dealing with debit card fraud, you think you have it bad imagine being on my end when I got part 3 of this call.

Customer: "I purchased an anti-virus for my computer and I never got the program, so I'd like to report fraud and get my money back."

Me: "Oh? Well tell me about the purchase."

Customer: "Well I was browsing the internet and then all of a sudden this huge pop up came up it was full screen I couldn't close it and it said your computer has a virus and you need to pay us $80.00 to get this anti-virus to remove it, well I bought it, and I got this anti-virus download and installed it and its not showing up on my computer and I still have the virus apparently because the pop up won't go away."

Me: "Wait you did what repeats what they did back to them Is that correct?"

Customer: "Yes that's exactly what I did."

Me: "Do you realize you just paid a pop-up for a virus?"

Customer: "I what?"

Me: "Yea, I mean did you ever purchase an anti-virus program before this pop up happened?"

Customer: "No..."

Me: "So if you didn't have an anti-virus then how did your non-existent anti-virus detect a virus? It's obviously a scam to get your card info and then you get a virus in return which can do god only knows what damage."

Customer: "Damnit, I feel stupid, well this is fraud I want to file a claim and get my money back."

Me: "I'm sorry but you willingly gave them your card number, this is not fraud, it's a merchant dispute and to get your money back you have to take it up with the merchant you gave your card to. The only thing I can do is cancel your card and send you a new one with a new number for a $5 replacement fee, in order to ensure the people you GAVE your card to can't use it fraudulently, I can also recommend you get a real anti-virus program or have your computer checked out by a professional technician so that you can get whatever you downloaded removed so it doesn't steal any more of your info or cause harm to your computer, also I do apologize but since were not related to any anti-virus sellers or computer shops I can't recommend any to you."

Customer: Instant rage and swearing at me for not knowing what fraud is disregarding the fact that I'm a trained fraud analyst

Me: Restates what fraud is and how this isn't fraud and suggest they get a new card

Customer: demands supervisor

Supervisor: tells them the same shit I just told them.

So yea, thanks IT guys. You helped fuel my alcoholism by sending them to me.

I jest though, I respect anyone who can do your job. Anyone with the will to learn can learn the knowledge you use to do your job, but it takes so much more to actually perform the job and deal with the users.

katsuya_kaiba · 1 year

HA! Reminds me of my mother. Years back, she came to my work mid shift complaining about a pop up saying she had a virus. I told her to wait till I got home in three hours for me to come look at it.

Cue three hours, I get home and she tells me she has it handled, she bought the antivirus Windows told her to get. I went to look at her comp and the 'antivirus' was named like Antivirus 2010. I told her she had a piece of Malware and she insisted it was a Antivirus program because when she called them, they insisted it was a 'Good, wonderful program.'

She fought with me over a hour, repeating "Are you sure it's a bad program?" over and over as I removed the damned thing and made her call her credit card company to reverse the charge.

Ryan7x · 1 year

I think I speak for all of us when I say,

ಠ_ಠ

yuri53122 · 1 year

one of my clients did that.... he called me up asking about a virus. I said that i would drive over and that i would be there in 4 hours. In that time, not only did he pay, but also made it worse

spongeloaf · 1 year

For my own faith in humanity, I sincerely hope you're making that up.

JimMarch · 1 year

"You sent your credit card data to the Ukrainian Mafia."

[deleted] · 1 year

Dear God

bobmagoo · 1 year

A guy I used to worked for bought a copy of "Skype Gold" from a similar type popup, this stuff gets pretty creative.

NiceGuysFinishLast · 1 year

I used to work with a guy who thought the Nigerian lady who couldn't speak english really loved him, and was going to move from Nigeria for him. I told him she'd ask him for money, and he said "No, she has gold coins she's going to sell!", and two days later told me that she had, indeed asked for a small amount to cover the transport of the coins, or some bullshit. He even considered sending it. I had no idea people are ACTUALLY that stupid, but I guess that's the only reason the scammers keep doing it.

scarcely_industrious · 1 year

People should need a license to operate a computer.

JaTochNietDan · 1 year

log1k · 1 year

Same thing happened to me. A guy from high school messaged me last year. I'll just copy paste it.

Guy:

u smart on comps?

Me:

Yes sir

Guy:

plase help me\

igot a virus

im infected]

i bought a pogram last week and its not even letting me use it]]\

Me:

what program?

Guy:

like spyware protection 11 or somethng]

it forced me to buy it

now its fucked up again and i cant do anything\

Me:

The virus forced you to buy it?

Guy:

yeah pretty much

100 dollars on creditcard

it fixed the problem\

but now its back, its asking for a registration key which i have, but its not working\

Me:

Well, if the virus is telling you to buy something, I wouldn't buy it

It's either another virus, or just some way to get your money/credit card information

is there a website you went to to buy it?

Guy:

no it just constantly kept poping up on my screen

that i was infected and i needed to purhase this program to clean it

Me:

So, I'm assuming someone has your credit card info now

As for the virus, there are plenty of free online tools that will scan your computer for you, I'll see if I can find some

Guy:

its not even letting me access the internet now tho

im on my dads comp right now\

I probably should have emphasised the whole "HOLY SHIT CANCEL YOUR CREDIT CARD NOW!" ... ~~I hope he understood the severity of that~~ I doubt he understands he just gave some guy his CC info.

ThanatosOfOne · 1 year

This will get buried but here goes...

Most of out customers are medical offices. I had a doctor that decided that my job was beneath him and he could do his own work. This is a 90 workstation 8 server environment. He called us one day to tell us that he didn't like the antivirus solution we had chosen (computer associates corporate edition) and he had found something that found over 400 viruses on his office computer and cleaned them. He purchased it for $39 and it must be MUCH better than the stuff we chose. WinAntiVirus 2007 .... yeah... he hit one of the popups that shows you all of the BS viruses you have and if you will just pay $$$ they will get them clean. The phone call later that day when he figured out he had been scammed was fucking awesome though. Same dude swapped ram in his nurses workstation while the fucking system was still on. One fried motherboard and two fried dimms.

mad87645 · 1 year

Mother of a 30 ft tall rabbit orgy.

Epistaxis · 1 year

Theoretically, would you have been punished in some way if you hadn't told Customer to cancel the credit card? Or would it just have resulted in money being separated from a stupid person?

TheBeardofWin · 1 year

Sadly I've come across many people that have fallen for this, a vast majority of them being elderly people that honestly didn't know any better. It's infuriating to see people getting taken advantage of.

Themehmeh · 1 year

psh are you kidding? a good 1/3 of my customers pay for it.

dghughes · 1 year

Years ago fax spam which preceded Internet spam you would see at offices mostly it was baffling but then one day I read somewhere 1% of it actually worked people actually believed it.

Consider that 1% over millions of faxes sent and a spammer could make money.

Kaavian · 1 year

A former tech flunkie for Dell tech support (while they still had call centers in the USA). As a rep working in their software support department, I can tell you THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. There was a rather popular one that we had printed instructions out for the removal process, what programs can be downloaded from where. Tinyurl addresses to tools. And on several occasions I overheard techs urging people to call their bank or credit card companies.

absolutezero1287 · 1 year

You'd think that people would be wary about providing credit card information. This isn't an issue with computer literacy its a complete lack of common sense.

IT_Derp · 1 year

To be totally honest, I'm not suprised people fall for it.

The majority of "real" anti-virus employ the same tactics to get you to pay.

PKLKickballer · 1 year

Sigh... I had to have this conversation with my wife. After she cancelled the card, someone actually called her trying to collect.

BobCox · 1 year

Just lie and say you never gave the info but they hacked your computer and stole it.

See Jury Nullification for details

DanishPorkRoast · 1 year

Sounds like something my dad would do.

efstajas · 1 year

You really laughed? I couldn't laugh about this. What the hell, how can one be so dumb?

bogartnumberone · 1 year

For the sake of my own dwindling sanity, please tell me that this wasn't the same guy as the one in the previous post.

proudcanadianeh · 1 year

I have had too many customers actually pay for this already. It doesn't even surprise me anymore.

So far, only one of the customers got his bank accounts hit. They took 10k.

Toribor · 1 year

I've ran into someone doing the exact same thing. She had a 120 dollar charge on her card, and decided she would call about it later but then got 4 more $50 charges on it through the evening. In her defense the program looked really legitimate, but it was on her work computer so I have no idea what the hell she thought she was doing.

yumenohikari · 1 year

Worked for an anti-spyware vendor for a few months, just before Vista hit the shelf, when Zlob in all its infinite iterations was king. I must have heard this story at least once a week. It's amazing just how gullible some people can be.

DarthMalice · 1 year

Back when I ran one of those computer repair shops this was actually quite a common problem. I can recall at least 9 different customers that actually paid the rogue virus. I know it's hard to accept that common sense isn't so common, but it's unfortunately the truth.

cresteh · 1 year

I almost say she deserved it for being so stupid.

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