A fun story at Ars Technica about getting a call from a supposed Windows technician, who tries to connect to their PC to fix a virus.
It's a total scam, of course. I can't believe people fall for that kind of thing, but like spam and email phishing, it must be successful enough for people to be doing it.
If you haven't read The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick, go do it now! I'll wait.
Good book, huh? It's a real eye-opener, and now whenever I get a phone call from somebody I don't know, I get really wary when they ask for any personal information. If it's from somebody representing a bank/credit card, or a charity/political group requesting a donation, I just don't give out information over the phone.
I recently got a message on my answering machine about some suspicious credit card activity, leaving me a number to call. Did I call that number back? Nope. I called the number on the back of my credit card. Fortunately, it was a legitimate call, and I solved the issue quickly. But what if it hadn't been?
These are the old-world equivalent of phishing over email. But they are still effective.
Anybody here get a suspicious call, or worse yet, actually fall for it?