"your system has been infected with 3 viruses"

[pm-r]

We no longer have a land line to our home and instead employ call blocker software on our iPhones to block pesky callers. However, the spammers and annoying callers use software which disguises their caller id so that it appears as a different number each time the call goes out. If I don't recognize a caller, I will usually let it go to voice mail which I can easily erase later on.

It's a big game. Them against us!

It sure is a big game, and one I'm determined to win, come **** or High Water…

We switched some time ago to our cable providers digitalphone, but later removed some features that also included call blocking, but unfortunately out cordless phones have a limit of 30 blocked calls which I've tried to trim several times.

So keeping that list edited is another PITA in dealing with the scumbags.

I had one from the "Windows Tech Dept" the other day about all my problems my computer was causing — again, and all I could do was give out a long sigh and I guess the poor fellow figured out what was coming and quietly hung up.

I'll let the answering machine deal with them more but it's hard when they use a phony "local number".




- Patrick
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[Randy B. Singer]

I have been getting this popup every few days for about 3 weeks. I realize it is not a virus and I have been tolerating it and just closing out the window (ie not following it's instructions). How can I locate the culprit and get rid of it.

You may not be able to, because despite appearances there is no malware on your computer.

There has been a social engineering exploit going around for a while now, and it is pushed out via compromised advertising networks. So what you are seeing is basically a malicious ad. When these things first came out they had the ability to make it appear that your browser was frozen, but Apple has kept them from being able to do that in recent versions of Safari. It is now pretty easy to just ignore these scam warnings when you see them. I've written an entire article about this, and how to deal with it:

Scary Internet Scam Becoming Disturbingly Common
https://tidbits.com/2015/07/07/scary-internet-scam-becoming-disturbingly-common/

The most important things to remember are to NEVER call a phone number included in one of these scams, and NEVER click on a link included in one of these scams....and if you ignore the preceding NEVER EVER EVER give any "tech support" or other entity remote access to your computer. That's how they really get you. And NEVER EVER EVER give them any sort of payment, especially a credit card number.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

...I have received two telephone calls stating not to use my computer as it is infected.

This is basically the same scam that is encountered via malicious ads on a Web site. But the scam works so well that the scammers can run it directly via phone call.

Once again, NEVER EVER EVER allow the caller to have remote access to your computer, don't ever give them any sort of payment, and don't give them any sort of personal information.

If you want to avoid scam, annoying, robo-calls, or other types of commercial phone calls, there are some wonderful services, most of them FREE, that will block them for you:

Truecaller
RoboKiller
Mr. Number
Nomorobo
Hiya

are all similar services. Google them to find them and sign up for the one that seems best to you.

YouMail will stop your phone from ringing with calls from suspected robocallers and even deliver a message that your number is out of service!

Personally I'm using Nomorobo on my home phone, and it's great. However, their cell phone version isn't free. Some of the other services will work for free on your cell phone.

 

[Slydude]

Thanks for the names of those services Randy. We have been getting quite a few of those calls recently. All of them appear to be coming formm a "local" number. Local only in the sense that they appear to come from anything but a 1 800 / 900 number.

 

[toMACsh]

Not anywhere loud enough for those f^%$#*ng callers I'd think!!!

======

But with your suggested method, you hear the annoying loud noise also.

 

[pm-r]

But with your suggested method, you hear the annoying loud noise also.

Quite true unfortunately, unless one happens to have a towel etc. close by to wrap around both the horn and phone!!!




- Patrick
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[Randy B. Singer]

Thanks for the names of those services Randy.

My pleasure!

These callers seem to be completely ignoring the national Do Not Call list, probably because no one is enforcing compliance. And they have been proliferating like mad. I get about a dozen a day, but NoMoRobo lets my phone ring once and then picks up for me. Problem solved!

 

[pm-r]

My pleasure!

These callers seem to be completely ignoring the national Do Not Call list, probably because no one is enforcing compliance. And they have been proliferating like mad. I get about a dozen a day, but NoMoRobo lets my phone ring once and then picks up for me. Problem solved!

Even here in Canada and for those registered with our "Do Not Call" list folks, reporting can be a real PITA time consuming hassle, and that's only possible when one has the called number which is often forged, so I don't see how they can even do anything about such callers.

I also wonder how such "blocker" services can even keep up with all the phony numbers they must use and not end up with false-positives.

And did I understand that some of those services are for cellphone users only and not land-line phone users???




- Patrick
======

 

[chscag]

And did I understand that some of those services are for cellphone users only and not land-line phone users???

Yes. One of the services that Randy mentioned "Hiya" is for iOS and Android as far as I know. I would like to add that services like "Hiya" do work quite well, however, they are battery eaters. In other words because the app is active and intercepts calls, it does wear the battery down quite fast. I found that out the hard way and no longer use "Hiya".

 

[MacInWin]

Charlie, that's not my experience. I have Hiya running in the background all the time and it doesn't even make the list of battery users over either the last 24 hours or the last week. I'm on an iPhone 8, running the latest update to iOS and Hiya. You might want to try reinstalling it to see if the battery problem was just a fluke.

 

[chscag]

You might be right Jake. The version of Hiya that I used was some time ago. And it definitely was eating my battery. I may install it again to see what happens.

 

[ferrarr]

I agree with Jake, I haven't experienced the battery draining issue while using HiYa. I used it on my iPhone 6 and still do on my 8+.

 

[chscag]

I agree with Jake, I haven't experienced the battery draining issue while using HiYa. I used it on my iPhone 6 and still do on my 8+.

@Bob:

Are you allowing "HiYa" to block all known robo calls, scam calls, and so forth? Also, is your "HiYa" loading those numbers into its data base so that it will intercept them before the call sets off your iPhone?

The reason I ask is when I was actively using "HiYa", I wound up with literally hundreds of numbers it was blocking. And nowadays the spammers will counterfeit local numbers so that they appear differently on your caller ID.

 

[MacInWin]

Charlie, I had mine set to Warn, not Block, but just shifted to all Block to see if battery use changes. As I said, Hiya doesn't even make the list, and the smallest one on the list is 1%, which puts Hiya in the <1% range with Warn set. It also has a Neighbor block which will look at the first six numbers to block them, too.

 

[chscag]

Thanks Jake. Like I said above, I'm reinstalling it to see if the same battery usage occurs.

 

[ferrarr]

I only have it set to "warn me" also, not "Blocked".