Nearly got duped by a phone scam.

I just had some fake Telstra technicians call up. It seemed so fishy and when I asked the technician for some details, he got stroppy and passed me onto another 'technician' who refused to supply her full name. They told me to follow instructions to "fix up" a problem with my computer to prevent it from being disconnected from the internet. I even told them that I'm not a Telstra customer and they said that this is irrelevant.

I've told them to call me back in 10 minutes, during which time I did a Google search and yeah... total scam. > I kinda want them to call me back so that I can counter-prank them, but I don't think they will (I may have scared them off). But yeah, if you ever get a call out of the blue from people claiming to be Telstra technicians saying that there's a problem with your internet, then be wary.

They were really pushy in a polite sounding way. They make you feel scared that you're going to lose internet connection and then offer to help you, so you initially feel like you want to follow all of their instructions because they come across as "Good Samaritans." But cracks started showing when I started asking them questions about themselves. Name, contact number (they gave me the generic BigPond tech support number) etc. The first techie even spat out a North Sydney address at me, but according to Google Telstra's Head Office is in Paddington. There's a Telstra _shop_ located in North Sydney, so I guess I could go there to buy a phone or something... I don't think that I'd get tech support for my internet connection though. Especially considering that Telstra/BigPond's not even my ISP. (-_-) Still, I can see how easy it would be for people to believe them because they work so well in psychologically disarming you. I even had my DOS window open and was ready to enter a command that the techie was telling me, but then I paused and thought, "Waaaaait a second..."

https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news/sc...ng-australians
http://exchange.telstra.com.au/2014/...lstra-calling/