It’s into this space that digital vigilantes have stepped, using a variety of techniques to bait, torment and, in the case of Browning, directly hack and expose the identifies of the people carrying them out.īrowning told the BBC his technique is to allow scammers to connect to his computer, which has been set up to attack the scammer’s computer back using the same remote desktop connection.
It’s a cheap crime to pull off and, until recently, the chances of being caught were close to zero because investigating scammers thousands of miles away can be difficult. Hundreds of thousands of people fall for these scams every year netting the individuals behind the frauds huge sums. The sums charged for bogus recovery can range from $80 to $1,000 or more. If victims are reluctant, scammers will often up the ante by claiming that child abuse imagery has been detected which they must clean up or will have to report to the police. Tech support scams typically involve phoning people in the UK or US claiming to represent a large company such as Microsoft and tricking them into allowing remote access to the computer after claiming it is infected with malware (scams also use malware pop-ups or poisoned search engine results containing fake support numbers). Publicised by a BBC documentary, the hack was the work of ‘Jim Browning’ (not his real name), who has acquired a following on his YouTube channel for his campaigns to expose how these crimes work and the individuals behind them.ĭuring 2019, Browning said he was able to identify dozens of call centres in India where many of tech support scams targeting English speakers originate. A UK cybercrime vigilante was so incensed by tech support scammers he reverse-hacked the call centre in India to reveal CCTV footage of perpetrators as they ripped off their victims in real-life calls.
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