You’ve seen them before. A call out of the blue to your parents, or even you, telling you that a large company has detected a problem with your system and that they can fix it. I received such a call from “800 BOOKS HELP” with a phone number of 818-860-4042. That’s a California area code.
They left this message. “Hi! My name is Robyn. I’m calling you from quickbooks support team. We have detected a critical issues with your quickbooks Updates and synchronization with into it server. which could lead to potential data damage or corruptions to your company’s file. It’s urgent that you contact us immediately. At (209) 272-7468. To rectify these issues. Thank you.” I figured, what the heck, they already have my phone number. Let’s call. It was enlightening.
When I called, “Robyn” answered. He was clearly in a boiler room as, with my headset on, I could hear lots of people talking in the background and it wasn’t English. He asked for the phone number associated with my account. I gave him my main number, which is where he left the message. It took some time for him to conduct his web search to locate my number so he could say to me “Dobinlaw.com”. Sure, whatever.
He told me there was a problem with syncing my data with the server. This, of course, makes no sense since I use the online version. I didn’t mention that to him. He then had me open Chrome (which is not on my machine) and wanted me to go to logmein. I told him I needed to get my own IT people involved. I tried to get a family member to portray tech support, but they weren’t interested. I eventually got back on the phone and told him that my Tech people weren’t stupid. I told him he could have sex with himself and hung up.
The interesting thing is that I hit the “record” button on my Zoom phone. It makes a loud announcement “This call is being recorded” and he didn’t say anything. I think he was talking when the announcement was made. Nevertheless, I have my first capture of a scam call.
The lesson to be learned here is, as always, be skeptical about these calls out of a blue.