Yesterday I was called by a man who identified himself as being a representative of Microsoft. He told me in a very strong accent, which I suspected was Indian, that they had detected that my computer had a virus on it, and it was very important that I now go to my computer, while he walked me through the steps of how to remove it.

I immediately knew something was up, and told the man I knew a fair bit about computers, was running the latest virus software, was very busy and was now going to hang up on him. While I was telling him this he talked over me, and actually had the nerve to start getting angry with me for not following his "important" instructions. 

After hanging up on him I looked up "virtual pc doctor" on google and it seems that this is a scam being run out of an Indian call centre and they currently appear to be focusing on New Zealand and Australian numbers. They even have some local numbers which they give out when people ask if they can call them back which, of course go straight through to India. 

The reason I am posting this here is not because I think anyone on this forum would be fooled by this. But my Mother was also called about a week earlier, and she is very trusting, is not used to these kind of scams, and was very concerned that a strange, insistent man from India was trying to get her to go to her computer to fix a virus. Even when she explained to the man that she didn't have a computer the man said they had detected a computer had been used from her address in the past. When I tried to explain to her that it sounded like a scam, she asked me "how did they know a computer had been used from my address then?" Referring to my last visit when I took my laptop down. I told her that there probably wasn't a house in the country which hadn't had a computer used in it at some time. 

Anyway the point I'm making here is to let your older relatives know about scams like these. What might seem obviously a scam to us might not be so obvious to older generations. As the price of international calls come down this sort of scam is obviously starting to move from email to telephone, so people need to be informed.

Here are some links to other articles on this scam:-

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/314295/windows_event_viewer_phishing_scam_remains_active
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/xpsecurity/thread/9797cdb2-b3c4-4be0-b2d7-71665d5df712