Somewhere in the depths of this blog is a personal account of one way in which I dealt with a potential scammer. We all know that these guys represent some form of low-life, devoid of any sense of honesty, and who prey on vulnerable people to make money under false pretences. BBC Panorama recently ran a programme exposing some of these practices, “Spying on the Scammers”. The programme was based on material supplied by Jim Browning (not his real name) who was able to contact a scammer in Dehli, allowing the scammer to connect to his PC, but then using some technical wizardry, Jim was able to reverse the connection. This allowed him to see exactly what the scammers were doing, not only from an IT perspective, but reversing the connection enabled him to access their CCTV cameras, which amazingly enabled him to see live video action of the scammers at work. It represents the most detailed exposé of a tech support scam, and can be seen on YouTube.
The Panorama programme is available on the BBC iPlayer. The 4-part YouTube videos make essential viewing in raising awareness of the risk involved in having any contact with these people.