If you personal a mobile phone, you recognize the ache and fury of a 9 a.m. name from “Microsoft Windows support.” These and related scams ship out actually billions of robo-calls yearly, plus numerous web-based scams, attempting to hook the unwary for providers they don’t want. With India being a hotbed of phony name facilities, the nation’s investigators are lastly cracking down on them with the joint assist of Microsoft and Amazon.

According to a press release from India’s Central Bureau of Investigation and weblog posts from Microsoft and Amazon masking the identical operation, the nation’s central regulation enforcement service teamed up with worldwide providers, native police, and the tech giants to look 76 places in 5 Indian states. Operation Chakra-II shut down facilities centered on hooking clients with pop-up adverts falsely claiming to be Microsoft or Amazon assist, providing a toll-free quantity the place an operator would use distant desktop software program to take over the rube’s PC. The operator would then “fix” the peerlessly purposeful pc, charging tons of of {dollars} in subscription charges for the pointless service.

The raids ended with the confiscation of 48 computer systems, 32 telephones, two servers, plus a further 33 SIM playing cards and numerous different electronics, freezing related financial institution accounts whereas the alleged criminals are prosecuted. The facilities primarily focused customers within the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, and Germany.

The Verge notes that Microsoft maintains a full (legitimate) support site devoted to this type of rip-off, and spot it. TL;DR, tech firms don’t name or electronic mail you out of the blue to report points together with your pc or different devices, and so they undoubtedly don’t contact you through internet pop-up adverts with toll-free telephone numbers. Amazon doesn’t have a devoted web page, however encourages anybody who’s noticed a rip-off to report it online.