Thursday, October 16, 2014

AMMYY.COM Scam (File this under #%@! that pisses me off)

So have we all heard of this particular scam? 

Someone call up (from a blocked or not working number) and claims to be from Windows or Microsoft  Tech support.  I know about it but lately they are calling my house more than once per day.  so now I decide to put some basic computer skills to work.
  1. I let them lead me through their 'verification process' which they delightfully have you open the even viewer to 'notice' some warnings and alerts.
  2. Then they give me what I wanted a url to go to to download their technical support connection so they can diagnose some information from my system.  This is where tools like whois.com com in handy.
  3. ammyy.com resolves to an obvious russian name and address that most likely do not exist or that is a previous victim they got a credit card off of.  The url was issued by enom.com.  Not a really bad company.
    1. I reported this abuse to them. (report.abuse@enom.com) (very prominent on their site)
  4. Next, you run a simple set of windows dos commands.  
    1. From the command Prompt.
    2. Ping www.ammyy.com gave me an IP address to work with [70.38.40.185]
    3. Tracert the IP address gave me a hosting company to look for (iWeb.com)
  5. Back to whois.com and you can find the support phone number of the hosting company
    1. 514.286.4242
    2. Based in Montreal (not a bad city at all)
  6. Wait for 25 minutes for their personnel to pick up just to tell you that you need to send an email to abuse@iweb.com. (not listed prominently on their website)
In the end I had a conversation with the US Attorney's office where they took the information and said they'd take care of it............ 

Does it seem excessive to do this just to tattle on these guys, maybe, but hopefully having their names on the internet will prompt the hosting and registrar to drop them.  And may be it might make those less technical avoid these kind of things.

cheers!

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