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Fnord666 writes:

IT Editor for Ars Technica, Sean Gallagher, [Sean Gallagher] was called by "Windows Support" recently and posted a story about how he dragged it out into a two-hour long phone call:

Technical support scams are the bottom of the barrel for cyber-crime. Using well-worn social engineering techniques that generally only work on the least sophisticated computer users, these bootleg call-center operations generally use a collection of commercially available tools to either convince their victims to pay exorbitant fees for "security software" or to extort them to gain control of their computer. And yet, these schemes continue to rake in cash for scammers.

On Monday afternoon, I got a phone call that someone now probably wishes they never made. Caller ID said the call was coming from "MDU Resources," but the caller said he was calling from "the technical support center." He informed me there were "junk files" on my computer slowing it down, and he was going to connect me with a technician to help fix the problem.

I was thrilled, displaying what my wife Paula felt was an inordinate amount of glee about getting the call. Over the next two hours, I subjected the scammers to such misery that Paula later told me she felt bad for them. "They probably had a quota to meet," she said sarcastically. "You probably kept them from getting four or five other people."

The article makes for a good read if you need a chuckle.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/take-your-sweet-time-how-i-scammed-a-tech-support-scammer-for-nearly-two-hours

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