Just a brief anecdote. I am visiting my relatives for the holidays. My mother receives a phone call from an unknown number and passes it over to me as they are asking her computer questions. I get on and some guy claims to be from a computer research company and needs me to go on to the computer and type a few commands in. Luckily I didn't take him serious or let it go to far but I asked him if by any chance I'd be going to a web site, downloading a rootkit, and allowing this computer to participate in their botnet/spam army after he roots it with a known exploit. He just kind of laughed and I told him to F'k off and hung up. No mercy from the dark side, even on the holidays.

Happy Holidays to all!

This actually happened to a mother of a friend I know and their computer got messed up pretty bad. It's great to see you were visiting for the holidays - they may of possibly went through with it if there wasn't a techie around. Seems social engineering is far from going anywhere! Your story made me recall a phone call to my mom where the person just flat-out asked for her credit card for them to continue through with some order she purchased. This of course was awhile back and she ended up hanging up the phone, but it makes you wonder how many people actually fall for these types of calls. Happy holidays, thanks for the share.

I would love to get a call like this. I would act like my mother does when I am trying to help her remotely. The caller would get so frustrated he would probably need to take a 15 minute break to regain himself. I think we could have great fun with something like this.