Some friends from "Microsoft support" called again

I just had a call from a phone number that is becoming familiar to me now. When the call comes in, the displayed source # is ten zeroes (0000000000).  I thought it might be "Harry", with whom I've had a couple of conversations, but this time it was "Stephen".  Those guys love me.  They always let me know they think my computer is notifying Microsoft that I'm infected with many many viruses and malware.  They need me to grant them access via join.me, or gotomypc.com, or some other tool (always legitimate tools) so that they can help me out.

I thought they said they were with Microsoft before, but today "Stephen" let it slip that he is with some other company that is a Microsoft Partner.  He said their name 3 times and I couldn't quite catch it.  We actually didn't have the best connection for me to understand it when he spoke so quickly. 

Allegedly, these same wacky guys have called an older relative of mine on a couple of occasions and worked on her PC for her. At the end of the call, they insist on payment via credit card or checking account information.  I've heard that they can get downright snarky even though they never said upfront that payment would be due.

I asked "Stephen" today for his extension at Microsoft or his Microsoft email address. That's when he tried to tell me the name of the Partner for which he works.  I didn't quite get that so I asked him for a Partner ID so I could look them up on the Microsoft web site. Somehow our connection dropped then. Must have been a really bad connection.

Note that I mentioned earlier they are using genuine (and trusted) remote access products to provide their services.  That may, allegedly, be of interest to your firewall or network support vendors out there, and to your staff that get those calls from the "0000000000" or similar phone numbers.

I helped my family member by blocking access using the OpenDNS product for her PC / home computer.  Even the free home versions allows you to manually add those remote access support sites to a black list. Between that and some other changes made on her system it will be OK.  If she gets a call from Harry or Stephen, she'll refer them to me since I have so much fun with those guys.