Please take into consideration that the people who are calling are usually naieve to the scam. They are often employed through classified adverts in local newspapers (work from home, earn heaps, all you need is a PC etc.) and follow a script with little knowledge of what they are doing and only a rudimentary understanding of English. This in itself is a level of security on the part of the master scammer in that the caller can't identify somebody they only know through email, if it ever get's traced back.

The same thing goes for those email offers you get of too-cheap-to-be-true product from overseas. The users are recruited over the Internet and are naieve.

When they call me, I tell them what they are doing is illegal and I don't usually hear from them for months at a time becasue as entertaining as it is, it's also frustrating and me telling them off ends the conversation real quick.

Yous are right, there are a lot of users out there who fall for this and might even feel their computer runs better after dropping $150 on a remote support deal.

There are also a lot of charges on your credit card statement for under a few dollars that you can't explain and don't bother following up, becasue it's only a few dollars and the description field is too cryptic to make sense to anybody or stand in a bank queue to work out.