I've been some what lucky in the bogus email/phone call front, as a matter of fact I don't know that I've ever received any. Well that has changed, I received a call today from the 202 area code, DC I believe. The man, who I could barely understand, called me by name and stated that he worked for Microsoft and that a problem with my computer was causing his server to run poorly and receive errors. Before he could get another word out I told him what a coincidence I too work for a large tech company and that I would be glad to resolve his problem if he would just give me his IP and a credit card number. He hung up immediately and hasn't called back.
Doing a google search on the number I found a message board that makes it appear that this is a somewhat new scam starting around early June. From some of the messages that people were leaving it sounds as though the person can be somewhat aggressive if you ask for crendentials and keeps calling many times a day. It sounds like what he wants is access to your computer and charge a fee to clean it up or at least that's his premise to get access. My question is do people really fall for this stuff and if so is it enough for the scammer to justify continuing this scam?
It's also kind of creepy knowing how much information is out there about us, doing a quick search I was able to find out quite a bit about myself.