Microsoft Gold Partner Accused of Scam Calls

[Jack]

Microsoft issued a statement to notify people that one of their Gold partners has been blacklisted after making scam calls to people, alerting them of fake virus infections.

India-based computer support service Comantra has been supposedly making phone calls to individuals in the U.S., U.K and Australia, posing as Microsoft personnel in the attempt to dupe computer users into believing that their machines were malfunctioning. They'd then offer to fix the issue in exchange for certain amounts of money.

According to PC Pro, the ill-intended calls were made since 2009 and even if the Redmond company was previously warned about the whole operation, no action was taken up until now.

"We were made aware of a matter involving one of the members of the Microsoft Partner Network acting in a manner that caused us to raise concerns about this member's business practices," a Microsoft representative said in a statement.

"Following an investigation, the allegations were confirmed and we took action to terminate our relationship with the partner in question and revoke their Gold status.

"There are no circumstances under which we would ever allow partners or any other organizations to pose as Microsoft," the spokesman added. "We view matters such as these extremely seriously and take immediate action if such behavior is brought to our attention and found to be the case," he added.

On the other side of the barricade, Comantra representatives say that everything is a mistake and that their competitors have set the whole thing up. They will attempt to clear the situation with Microsoft in order to regain the partner status.

The company's director is certain that his employees aren't doing the things they are accused of.

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[MrXidus]

Amazing, Only yesterday I got a call from these people. An Indian sounding woman, Told me I had a virus and that they need to remote access my PC to "fix" it.

I admit I screamed down the phone about 10 different cuss words and hanged up. Because that's what these idiotic scammers deserve.

Good times lol.

 

[Deleted member 178]

I admit I screamed down the phone about 10 different cuss words and hanged up. Because that's what these idiotic scammers deserve.

i had receive a call long time ago from my french ISP trying to scare me about security with the purpose of making me buy McAfee solutions, i delivered her a pure technical flow of security geek jargon on her face, 1mn later she said thank you very much then hang up....

 

[jamescv7]

Epic fail, especially if the user knows his/her computer is clean, why bother to talk from those Scam Calls told that the machine was infected.

 

[WinAndLinuxTutorials]

They think that we don't have brain to know if our PC is infected or not. Imagine I just bought a PC with no OS installed, they called us saying "Your PC is infected"

 

[Deleted member 178]

They think that we don't have brain to know if our PC is infected or not

i just notice that only english-speaking countries were focused

 

[Littlebits]

Usually when I see Microsoft Gold Partner logo on a vendor's website, the first thing I think of is phishing scam. I haven't found many sites with the logo to be trustworthy.
One of the best examples is Uniblue.

Thanks.

 

[win7holic]

i never care if on some site have Microsoft Gold logo or whatever.
just need to know. must be read about software. background company. and other details about it.

 

[jamescv7]

These days badges including Microsoft Gold Partner can be easily faked as to convince users that website was trustworthy.

 

[MrXidus]

There is a part of Microsoft's website that you can actually search for who is a trusted Gold Partner. You can browse by name or search, I forgot where this website is. If someone can find it and post it here it would be helpful so in future needs we can search. Cheers.

 

[jamescv7]

This website you can search between Gold Certified Partner or Certified Partner.

 

[MrXidus]

Thanks james that was quick of you to find and reply to me. Bookmarked for future use.

+Rep

 

[RyanAndJane]

phew! i agree with jamescv7... don't talk to them when you're sure...however, what these people do is scare you, and they sound so sure and honest that you usually feel like letting them do the job right away. that's fooled a lot of people already. good thing everybody's becoming more aware about them.. here's a post i got from http://www.callercenter.com, "Caller said they were receiving messages from my computer & attempted to have me run 'eventvwr' on my laptop. At that point, I hung up. My understanding of that scam is that, had I gone along, they would have claimed that something in the event logs showed I was infected with viruses and eventually got around to asking for control of my desktop." ---dave... i hope this helps...

 

[WinAndLinuxTutorials]

This website you can search between Gold Certified Partner or Certified Partner.

Thanks I used this site long ago but I forgot the link.

 

[bitbizket]

This maybe sound stupid, but how do they get all this phone numbers anyway?
Do they actually called out by the person identity (name) when they makes those calls?

 

[supermodel]

I admit I screamed down the phone about 10 different cuss words and hanged up. Because that's what these idiotic scammers deserve.

i had receive a call long time ago from my french ISP trying to scare me about security with the purpose of making me buy McAfee solutions, i delivered her a pure technical flow of security geek jargon on her face, 1mn later she said thank you very much then hang up....

-- served them well! hahaha

 

[supermodel]

these guys are getting better!there's no stopping them and there's no telling what they can do to you. is it LEGAL to scam the scammers? just wondering...

 

[supermodel]

phew! i agree with jamescv7... don't talk to them when you're sure...however, what these people do is scare you, and they sound so sure and honest that you usually feel like letting them do the job right away. that's fooled a lot of people already. good thing everybody's becoming more aware about them.. here's a post i got from http://www.callercenter.com, "Caller said they were receiving messages from my computer & attempted to have me run 'eventvwr' on my laptop. At that point, I hung up. My understanding of that scam is that, had I gone along, they would have claimed that something in the event logs showed I was infected with viruses and eventually got around to asking for control of my desktop." ---dave... i hope this helps...

hey! i checked out http://www.callercenter.com and the site is practically filled with reports scam complaints! i never knew these fraudulent activities are THAT rampant!