EVENTVWR

The Indian enevtvwr phone scam.

The Scam

Many people will have experienced the Indian telephone virus scam.  It starts with a telephone call and an Indian technical expert telling you s/he has information that your computer is infected with a virus.  He then tells you to press the "Windows" key (the one with the flag on it) and the "R" key.  This, of course, opens the "Run" window where you can type commands into the operating system.  There are various different scams that they use but a typical one is to ask you to type "eventvwr" which runs the Micro$oft Windows Event Viewer.  This shows a list of logged events and typically is full of error messages.  The error messages are quite normal and Windows generates a lot of them as it tests all sorts of things.  They are meant to be there and are only interesting if you are very technical and want to know detailed information about what sequences of operations Windows is executing.  (Another use I have discovered is to detect if anyone has switched your computer on whilst you were away.)  But...

To the uninitiated this can look like a lot of frightening error messages and presumably the scammer then goes on to frighten you and to suggest there is something wrong with your computer.  They may suggest you have a virus or a bug or a Trojan or a worm or some other dastardly infection.  They will then get you to hand control of your computer to them and they will download all your data which will likely contain bank accounts, passwords, credit card details and all sorts of very useful information for what is called "identity theft".

There is little more that needs explaining here except to say they can do a lot of damage and get away with a degree of serious profit.

The Conversation

I just received one such phone call and was very entertained to keep the guy going for a while.  I kept asking him to spell things again and again and then declared, with feigned horror, that the box had disappeared and we had to go through the process again.  I did enquire as to how much he was paid and suggested he told his boss to put his finger up his rear orifice.  He queried the word "office" and so I spelt it very slowly with the phonetic alphabet (which I learnt during my time as a seaman (not a sperm); O for Oscar, R for Romeo, I for India, at which point he asked me if I liked India... F for Foxtrot, I for India (the same silly joke), C for Charlie and E for Echo.  A moment later another voice, speaking much better English, announced "Hello this is Peter."  He went on to say "Do you see in the top right hand corner of your screen that I am fu<*ing your mother and your daughter."  Well I had to laugh.  I said if he could see my mother he wouldn't be so proud of his claim.  The abuse got more and more basic and obscene and I laughed more and more.  I had clearly got under his skin.  This went on for a while with comments going back and forth until I said to him that I understood he was only trying to make a living and I wished him well in the future and hoped he could find a better way to do it.  The torrent of abuse that was flowing quite rapidly evaporated and he said that he had not sworn at me but that he had done it because I had been rude to [whoever] and in no time at all we were having a civilised conversation.  It was brief, to the point, he apologised and we both wished each other well and said goodbye.

The Philosophical Point

It is all well and good for us civilised people to satisfy our egos that we are really nice and morally good people.  It is a sad fact that a lot of that is precisely collective Freudian projection.  I have discovered that this civilised world of ours is not so civilised after all.  The Joker's quote from The Dark Night: "When the chips are down, these uh, these 'civilized people', they'll eat each other." comes to mind.  We are living in an aggressive, competitive, oppressive, controlling hierarchy akin to the ancient Egyptian slave culture.  We are wage slaves (well those of you who are lucky enough to have a wage).  The financially well off are controlling the environment and like a game of musical chairs it doesn't work if you supply enough chairs.  They require poor people and they manipulate the situation to achieve that.  And poor doesn't just mean hard up it means at the bottom of the pile life is as bad as it gets and death is the only reprieve.  They need that threat to force others to comply with their wishes.  So we pretend we live in a democracy and we pretend we care about other people, we pretend we have a National Health System and a Social Security system, we pretend we have a just and reasonable legal system and we pretend to offer an education to our children, but all these things still require compliance for their own financial survival and very well being.  Notice the salaries of the people who are at the top of these systems and check up the actual facts behind the production and distribution of health or the facts behind the education system or the legal system and you will soon discover that if they don't get their way they are ruthless in the extreme.  So we here in the "West" are some of the richest humans on the planet and we need poor countries to be under our control and doing our biding.  The poor folk in India are in an unacceptable state of human deprivation but they have the internet.  Humans have the potential to be intelligent and the message is spreading far and wide even more so than when the printing press was invented.  Some people get the idea that the people who are squeezing them to death have no right to do that and eventually, combined with their instinct to survive, they resort to the same tactics they feel are used against them.  Deception and trickery to obtain income to survive seem the only option short of suffering in silence and losing their life.  It is perfectly understandable that they would resort to "ripping people off" just as the hierarchy are doing to them.  And when you think about it, if you are going to succeed, you have to pick on people who are weaker than you, just as the hierarchy do.  So I get it.  (Unlike the Prime Minister Baboon Cameroon who makes the same claim.)  If you want to see how sincere these kind and helpful organisations like the Children Services really are, then check out their behaviour and how they "handle" a complaint at the Toxic Drums "Children Services Abuse" section.

We live in an abusive controlling culture that strips people of self responsibility and infects them with a charade of a "moral framework" that perpetuates the power mongers control.  Think about our education system for example.  It is an inhumane mechanism of brainwashing.  Kids are not really provided with useful information for themselves but rather they are taught lessons that are useful for the controllers.  Studies amply illustrate that what kids really learn at school is how to kowtow to the bosses.  Of course if you do this better than the next chap you will be rewarded better and so the hierarchy supports itself.  Until people start taking personal responsibility for their lives the human race is destined to failure.  People in this culture regard themselves as good because they do what they are told and they regard what the politicians do in their name abroad as not their personal responsibility but it is.

Untill you are willing to do something about stopping the disgusting deception and abhorrent behaviour of the politicians you can't complain when the little guys in another country simply want to steel some of your dosh.  Let me correct that: You can complain but with no moral legitimacy.

For lots more information on this scam and many others see Zyra's Phone Virus Scam page.