It's 2015 and miscreants are still trying to dupe you with fake BSoDs Tech support scammers have mocked up a web page with an even more dire version of Microsoft’s infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) error page. The website, registered behind an anonymity service on 1 September, wants to convince surfers tricked into visiting it that their PC has been derailed in order to dupe prospective marks …
It's probably been 3-4 weeks since my last BSOD on Win7-64, which usually happens when Firefox is burning about 3GB of RAM and there's lots of flash going on. It's been longer than that since I had a legible BSOD, because these usually end up squished and warped in the top 1/3 or so of my screen, but I've had them this year as well.
Hardware's a year-old HP 8-core laptop with 8GB of RAM.
There was a time when a computer with something like 8GB of RAM would have been expected to have ECC-protected RAM, because of the high risk of undetected data/code corruption causing havoc (a system crash, or permanent but undetected data corruption in files etc).
Why doesn't this matter any more?
It sounds from the description that this runs in a browser so what happens when the browser isn't running full screen?
This could be kludged using late 90's JavaScript in web browsers like Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0.
Typically, they just created a pop-up window that was bigger than the screen it was being viewed on, thus making the window borders disappear. The prevalence of pop-up blockers makes things a bit more challenging, but not impossible.
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@BenBell
Please dont - those numbers would contact you to the emergency services in both locations!
You might want to make it a little clearer...
People's lives can genuinely be put at risk - it's VERY scary being on hold for the emergency operator...
Good joke, and it sort of serves to illustrate a serious point - numbers, especially premium rate numbers, should be attributable to someone traceable & responsible for their misuse. In particular, a premium rate number should NOT pay out immediately, and the telco should check there haven't been any complaints first, else the money should be held in case it (ALL) has to be repaid.
A friend of mine was caught by one of those "modem redialler" scams years ago. presented with a huge bill from BT he refused to pay it , saying they shouldnt give criminals premium phone lines and then assist them picking up their loot.
BT agreed and backed down.
He tried to get me to open the Windows Event Viewer so he could claim all those errors were virii. It failed because I told him there was no such application installed on my machine. Then he tried to get me to visit a website "to test for errors" & when I recognized the URL, I told him the results were "Kinda fuzzy. It says something about a kernel error? I'm not sure, the screen is all garbled." He went through a couple more "troubleshooting steps" trying to get me to install various Remote Desktop Clients, and I told him they all failed as invalid applications. He finally asked in exaspiration if I was sure my computer wasn't compromised at that moment, to which I assured him "I know it's not compromised. It's a Commodore 128D. It doesn't run Windows." He started screaming & cursing at me, so I laughed in his ear & told him I'd ask his mom about him when she came over later for delivering my nightly oral delights. He cursed at me in (Farsi?) for a bit then slammed down the phone.
Man I love fucking with their heads. It's like they WANT to be abused!
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