I like to waste a little of their time and then tell them they are criminals and if their mothers knew what they were doing, they would be ashamed of them. This can get people from the Indian subcontinent really riled up. I like to think that this will carry over into their next call and make the victim suspicious.
I waste their time by pretending to be real Microsoft support, asking for their contract number and asking which of their Azure servers has developed a problem. “Sorry, you want to connect to it? Are you saying your control panel isn’t working or that you have no path to the server?”. Then tell them I think this is a fraudulent call and warn them that if they misuse a computer in the EU or the US they could be extradited to stand trial.
Excellent. When my wife worked there she used to subvert the caste system by any means available. As I recall in the early 1980s the head of India Pistons in Chennai (joint venture with a British company) was low caste, and hugely enjoyed inviting European visitors to the boardroom for lunch so his fellow, high caste directors had to sit there while he asked them if they would care for roast chicken, or maybe a pork chop.
You must live in some bubble-wrapped place where phone-phishing doesn’t happen. Must be nice.
Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard. Tying up a few minutes of their time does nothing to stop their scamming. It is a job hazard, a mere inconvenience.
Self-aggrandizing analysis of another person’s thoughts and feelings.
I kept one of the callers from “Microsoft” on the line for a good ten minutes once but got bored. “Yes, it’s taking a very long time to start my PC. That must be due to the problem you told me about”.
Less scammy but still annoying are the cold-callers who start by asking “How are you today?” The other day I replied to one with a big sigh, “Not so good actually”. She responded, “That’s great. I’m calling today about your PPI…”
My elderly and extremely trusting father was on the phone with the “Microsoft support” line for two house once. They kept asking for passwords to his computer probably to do what you describe. Luckily (??) he was unable to give them passwords or access because he doesn’t quite understand all of that about the computer because my sister had set it up for him. He even gave them her phone number so that she could tell them the password to get the “problem” fixed. They even called her! She did not fall for the scam. Security through befuddlement.
The end results was that my tech savvy older brother and my sister got my father a stripped down computer (specifically for older less sophisticated users) that runs Linux and that can read e-mail and go on the internet but doesn’t have anything important on it and is hard to break into. My sister does the finances on her protected computer and my dad can play solitaire whenever he wants to on his.
They then had a good discussion with my father about cybersecurity and scammers and social engineering. The conversation ranged from not trusting random people who call you on the phone to Publishers Clearinghouse. I suggest that anyone who has this issue have the conversation with their non-technical elderly family members before the problem. We were lucky.
Edit: The simple computer version he got was from telekin.com
Last time one of them called me, I replied “Am I near the computer!? Hell, I’m fucking it!” I don’t think he got it. He gave up and warned my my computer would be locked. Usually, though, the kids are around when these guys call, and I have to keep a lid on it.
Here are a couple of accounts of other memorable calls that I’ve had:
I was rather surprised by what happened in that second video, where it seemed like an unnecessarily lengthy and elaborate but also technically unsophisticated con, where ultimately it just seemed to lead to a request for money to “fix” imaginary problems. I imagine that other scammers also engage in variety of more sophisticated strategies involving bots and stealing/encrypting personal data, etc. The scam shown didn’t require any technical sophistication at all, so I imagine it’s the most common.
In one of those videos, the guy ties him up for almost an hour. That’s significant. I"m not patting myself on the back at all because I don’t have the patience for that kind of thing (and any efforts to string them along were more out of curiosity to learn the details of the con).
Believe I’ve mentioned it here before, but I do love to mess with phone scammers. I think the guy who ‘played’ his wife missed a golden opportunity for some really violent sounding arguments/assault. Having another person in the room to act things out can add a lot of fun, especially if you use some sound effects.
Him: Give me the credit card, please?!
Her: YOU DON’T TALK TO ME THAT WAY!! BAM CALL ME A WENCH AGAIN BAM YOU WEAK KNEED SCALLYWAG CRACK
As I psuedo-beat my kid during one scammer call, the scammer was entirely nonplussed about the violence I was acting out…
A few things, though. First, there’s a fair amount of bigotry in these videos. In the last video, the guy ridicules the scammer for the way they speak and tells him/her that their accent is “terrible” and then has them repeat the word “malware” to ‘help’ the person say the word correctly. Another bit is when they ‘have trouble’ with the scammer saying the letter ‘W’ as “dablu”. In my view, you’re already fucking with them and wasting their time–insulting their heritage is a fast way to put me on the side of the scammer. “Malware, Moilware, how about fuck you, American dickbag?”
Another thing, I probably shouldn’t fuck with the scam calls I get because, and follow me here, these people are praying on elderly and infirm Americans because nobody is there to protect them. Once a person gets old and can’t walk so great, we Americans tend to ship those people off to ‘rest’ homes that are neither homey or rest-worthy, and had we kept those people in our own homes where we might be able to affect some communication security (so to speak), then these scammers wouldn’t have anyone but the utterly stupid to pray upon.
And yet, I fuck with them. Here’s a protip. For extra fun, head over to your friendly Apple store and text your own phone from a few of the iphones on display. Then you can call, text, or otherwise communicate (in whatever way you choose) with whomever might be handling one of those phones.
Lastly: you kids out there are some really really terrible prank callers. Think about what you’re going to say before the person answers. Try to use your best win-friends-and-influence-others thinking cap to mess with the person. And please skip the heavy breathing thing because it is so utterly fucking lame and easy to leverage to your detriment. Another protip: listen to the Jerky Boys because they had that shit down tight back in the 80s. Now. Get. Off. My. Lawn.
If I may also offer a take on this same theme… repeated calls from the now shuttered “medical alert” scam call and also from the “this is your last alert about your credit card” scams led me to take the following action when repeated requests and then demands to be removed from their list were ineffective.
Uh huh, nice try. Not really interested in any gay porn at the moment. 
Drat! You’ve caught on to my ploy!
OK, but seriously, if you want to read the merry chase I led them on, just click on the below link:
if you dare…
(EDIT: If the text is strange, it’s because there’s a lot of jackass word filters on this forum. Things like ‘phone’ are replaced with ‘penis’.)
I just got a call offering me a free vacation, at the precise moment I heard my boss walk by. I thought, “let’s see if I can get them to talk to my boss.” (He’s pretty chill.)
But alas, I didn’t even get that far. They hung up on me after asking for my name and I replied “the man on the moon.”
And why do all of these calls (purportedly) come from Florida? It’s always the 407 or 321 area codes.
Chromebooks are excellent for this, but you do need to get your parents to understand a password.
Fortunately it’s safe to write it down on a piece of card with the instruction “Never, ever tell this to anybody else. Even if it’s me, the Pope, the President or Microsoft.”
50 Shades of Scammer Retribution. But tying up isn’t enough. What is needed is a precision drone that can administer corporal punishment.
A drone that knocks out the “boiler room’s” telephone line is sufficient.
Classic materials! We passed around bootleg tapes in high school. I was kind of astounded recently to see that Boston.com needed an actual article to explain “deez nuts”.
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