In reply to a post by keithwjones:

Beware they are ringing people now.

They never stopped. There are teams in India who have been doing this every day for years to to all English speaking countries.

Here's an excellent youtube video of someone recording a video of a virtual machine showing how they work the scam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKjyMKj3n4

great entertainment thanks.

Id love to get a call from (fake) Microsoft so i could play along with them for a laugh

read various parts of the guy's blog he knows his stuff.

Finally also someone who blogged about how stupid it is to block pasting in password fields.

http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/07/its-not-about-suppor...

Interesting. The login page seems to allow pasting so perhaps the twitter pressure worked?

https://www.britishgas.co.uk/Login/Login-Verify/

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Id love to get a call from (fake) Microsoft so i could play along with them for a laugh

I got bored with being wound up by such calls at home and now have fun with them. My latest wheeze is to drop in animal impressions into the conversation, beginning with a playful bark building to a crescendo with out of control farm yard animals. It's hard to keep a straight face when mooing down the phone to some unknown overseas call center operative, I probably need to get out more!

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Id love to get a call from (fake) Microsoft so i could play along with them for a laugh

Best fun I had was when the call center guy was as follows :-

CC: Are you at your computer?
ME: Yes

Repeat
{
CC: Can you press Windows flag key and R at the same time?
Me: Yes

CC: What do you see on your monitor?
Me: Nothing.

} Until CC: Is your computer turned on?

Me: No, get lost you scammer.

The repeat section went on for about 10 minutes with pauses at various time where I could hear the CC person asking other people what to do.

He He