I kept these clowns on the phone for nearly an hour pretending not to know what the "." key is. Kept telling them I'm typing "DOT". Passed off to the three different "supervisors". "NO NO NO, you don't have to type DOT, just dot!". "that's what I typed, wwwDOT.., it always works for me".

Funny thing is,most of you seem to be in the States and I am in Switzerland and get the same calls

I also got a call from some guy in New York (looked it up on reverse lookup) who sounded like a Pakistani.  He knew my name and said he had my IP address and that I had terrible spyware on my computer that would crash my hard drive. I told him I wasn't buying anything and asked him for a number to call him back.  He gave me 1-866-539-8803 which is a number for bandwidth.com...  I never called him back.

Garbled voice so hung up. Called the # back and says it was disconnected..........
PS: We ARE on the "do not call list" for what it's worth.

This is a fraudster telling me from they are from Microsoft. They are trying to get access to any computer.

Received a call from this number at approximately 1:30 pm MST with a request to turn on my computer to correct some error messages.  Indian accent.  When I asked him for his name and organizational affiliations, he hung up.

The national pandemic of telephone terrorism perpetrated by desperate criminal collection agencies and scam artists of every despicable sort is because they are trying to terrorize people who are naive enough to answer and submit to unsolicited telephone calls or written "collection" letters that have no legitimate legal debt associated with them or any of the companies, universities, or whomever else they claim to represent. Because most "little guys" were bankrupted by the criminal Wall St / Congress / Big Oil / Big Bankers / Big Business / Military / Robber Barons, so the desperate collection agencies are attempting to collect unpaid debts from innocent people by terrorizing them into submission. News reports claim that some of these nefarious rogue calls are originating from overseas, where the caller claims to be a relative down on his or her luck who needs hundreds or thousands of dollars to get out of trouble, a policeman or government agent threatening their unwitting victims with lawsuits, fines, garnishments, seizures of property and imprisonment, and any other unconscionable tactic they can use to terrify and swindle the unwary out of their life savings.

Word of advice. NEVER answer any calls you don't recognize or are not expecting. Use selective call rejection service if available, or switch to an Internet-based telephone service which provides comprehensive call rejection options. If rogue calls become chronic, turn off all the ringers on all of your phones except one, and set its volume to the minimum setting. Digital hardware call blockers, the popular "DIGITONE Call Blocker 10" for example, could help or do harm depending on how high-tech and aggressive the rogue callers are against your phone number. The more technology you use against them, the more likely they will use technology more aggressively against you to the point where your phone could ring more frequently from rogue calls and in middle of the night hours. So staying lower-tech could actually help to keep your phone a bit more under their unrelenting predatory radar. If you don't answer the call and the caller is legitimate, they will usually leave a voicemail after the first or second try. Rogue callers almost never leave voicemail messages because that could be used as evidence against them if it came to a lawsuit, albeit spoofed calls are backed by governments and corporations, so there is nothing the little guy can do against such illegitimate activities but to block and ignore them. If you receive a rogue letter in the mail warning you of some "collection" action against you, if you don't actually owe it, reply with a short letter stating that you don't owe it. Or if you do owe all or part of it, reply with something like "You claim I owe you a debt. Under §809 FDCPA, I request validation of this debt."

Only give them your name as THEY have written it to you (e.g. ?John Doe? not ?Jonathon Q. Doe? or however you normally sign your own name), address, and the account number they report. But if you do not owe the debt (zombie debt, aged debt, mistaken or stolen identity, forgery, etc.) state that you have never done any business with them or with the (alleged) original creditor of any kind and you expect the collection agency to close the matter, stop harassing you and take any bad credit marks they've caused off of your credit rating, and furthermore, that any further contact from them must be in writing on their official business correspondence letterhead. Send your letter to them a.s.a.p., always within thirty days, first class certified mail return receipt requested. If they refuse it and you get the letter back unopened, leave it unopened and save it in your files as evidence against them should they pursue legal action against you. If they did receive it and continue to pursue action against you, let them. The judge will throw it out of court. If the rogue collection agency sells your account to another rogue collection agency just tell them the claim has been proven invalid and offer to send them a copy of your letter to the previous rogue collection agency.

Warn all your friends about this rash of desperate collection agency terrorism, and how to combat it. Knowledge is power. The more you learn how to combat rogue collection agencies, back-taxes scammers, phishing scammers, "faith and family" scammers, political action committees and other low-life flimflammers, the more you will learn how easy it is to do.

Above all, keep a record of everything, of every rogue call w/ caller ID information displayed including time and date of each call. Maintain a complete file on any snail-mailed intimidation from rogue collection agencies, including copies of all correspondences and postal receipts. Reporting rogue calls on sites like 800notes.com, whocallsme.com, phoneowner.info is a great idea too, because many people find these sites by googling for the rogue number(s) after receiving calls from them.

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Start Here:
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs3-hrs2.htm
http://www.google.com/search?num=50&q=%C2%A7809+FDCPA
http://www.google.com/search?num=50&q=zombie-debt
http://www.google.com/search?num=50&q=slander-of-credit
http://www.google.com/search?num=50&q=limited-liability-company+collection-agency
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs27-debtcoll.htm
http://www.ehow.com/way_5849463_do-up-certified-dispute-letter.html
http://www.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Defeat-a-Collection-Agency
http://www.hubpages.com/hub/Battling-Consumer-Debt-Collectors-Part-2-I-Do-Not-Owe-This-Debt
http://www.hubpages.com/hub/Sample-letters-for-disputes-to-creditors--collectors-and-credit-bureaus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDCPA
http://www.fair-debt-collection.com/Disputing ... ute-letter.html
(most say the above sample letter is too long and should be much shorter)
http://www.fair-debt-collection.com/statue-limitations.html
http://www.spooftel.com/

Credit Report:
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

USPS:
https://www.usps.com/send/insurance-and-extra-services.htm

Other links:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/02/29 ... tors/index.html
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Defeat-a-Collection-Agency
http://clarkhoward.com/shownotes/category/12/103/358/
http://clarkhoward.com/topics/drop_dead_letter.html
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Information for filing complaints against rogue telephone calls, telephone harassment, false "bill collector" harassment, etc., in the United States and Canada (pursue legal action only as a last resort):

UNITED STATES

US National Do Not Call Registry, file complaint: https://www.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx

Federal Trade Commission
http://www.ftc.gov 1-877-382-4357
File complaint online: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=en
that is at www.ftc.gov

Federal Communications Commission
Telephone toll free:  1-888-225-5322
http://www.fcc.gov/contacts.html
File complaint online: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumers.html
http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm

FCC Abandoned Calls Complaint form:
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/1088D-R.pdf
email:  fccinfo@fcc.gov

Better Business Bureau, Check out a Business, find owner, contact info; file a Complaint:
http://www.bbb.org/us/


INTERNET CRIME:
File report for Internet Crime at:
Internet Crime Complaint Centre
http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx


CANADA

RCMP Phone busters
Telephone toll free: 1-888-495-8501
Mon-Fri 8:30-5:20 pm (Eastern Time)
E-mail: info@phonebusters.com
RCMP Website is at: http://www.phonebusters.com  
File complaint online:  https://www.recol.ca/intro.aspx?lang=en
(Register with a password and then can continually file complaints)

Canada National Do Not Call Registry:
Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
Telephone toll free to File A Complaint: 1-866-580-3625
(to withdraw a complaint is 877-249-2782)
CRTC online complaints form: https://www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca/pfplin-fccoin-eng
that is at  www.crtc.gc.ca

Better Business Bureau, Check out a Business, find owner, contact info; file a Complaint:
http://www.bbb.org/canada/

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Just received call from 347-263-8316 from someone with heavy accent and spoke very poor English, couldn't even pronounce my name. Said he had an important message concerning my computer. I just told him that I had no interest in talking to him and that he called a business line. Since I have Apple computers I seriously doubt that there is any kind of problem that anyone would just mysteriously know about. Seems like I have to block a new number every day from all the scam phone calls.

I got that same call and when I asked where he got my phone number, he hung up.  Has to be a scam.

got the call 2 days in a row told them my computer was broke & then hung up on them  Didn't speak english well & could hear alot of back ground noise. I don't know how that get the phone no. Opened an email from fed-ex I few days ago & got a virus. You have to watch everything you open.

Got a call from this number at 4:25 am!!! When I answered it there was no one on the line. caller id said it was from New york. I am in Oregon!! First thought you have in your mind when the phone rings in the middle of the night,is something has happened to a loved one. My brother has cancer,so that was the first thing that came to mind!! Who are these people???

And if you piss them off or find out that they are fraud, they'll start their robo spamming.

Somone from this number called three times today, all with a Indian accent saying to "quickly get on the computer because it had several error messages". This is a major scam, and they are trying to to get remote access to your computer.

My husband just to a call on his cell phone from this number 347-263-8316.  They said they were calling from Microsoft and that his computer was infected with multiple trojan horses and he needed to pay for their help to remove them.  They said that his computer had come to their attention because it was sending messages to the Microsoft office.  They had him go to a website: microsoftsupportusa.com/tb-pc.html to prove they were who they said and wanted to have him allow them to view his machine through a connection.  They sounded pretty legit they even walked him through looking at some files on his computer that they said were the program files for the trojans.  But the phone connection was very bad and the women on the other end didn't speak good English - WARNING!

They have called me three times in last three days. First time said something about computer. It old them I do not own one

Received a call today from unavailable 347-263-8316 - I answered & kept saying hello but no-one ever answered me!  I am SO tired of these unwanted calls!

Got called by this number.  Was a rude person who said she knew my IP number.  Funny part was, when I asked her what my IP was, she responded something like 192.168... which is obviously an intranet IP.  Total idiot and rude to boot.  She also said something about Windows software that sounded alarmist.

Call from 347-263-8316 at approximately 1:10 pm (Mountain) - caller ID indicated "New York" - did not answer, no message left.

Received a call on 11/8/12 @ 9:30 AM from someone asking for the owner of the computer in my home.  They explained that my computer was infected and was sending out messages to other users.  After I told them that I'd have my IT person take a look at it, they hung up.

Called did not leave voicemail.

I received a call from 347-263-8316 on 11/7/12 10:34 am (to 406-322-9915) at the time i was on a totally different line troubleshooting a tech problem with whom i thought was AVG tech support.  The caller, from 347-263-8316 tried to identify himself as someone helping me with my computer problem from Microsoft....
Now i don't know who to trust!  and both were trying to gain remote access to my computer, scarey.  
After this, we have been getting calls on our cell phone: 406-322-9915, with a "restricted" caller id.

This number called me while i was troubleshooting a "virus" or mysterious problem with my computer with AVG TECH SUPPORT on a totally different line - how did they get my number (that i wasn't even using???) They said they were from Microsoft and trying to help me troubleshoot??? yeah!  
Now i don't know who to trust.

Twice yesterday. Thought is was last minute campaigning.
Then twice this morning. No messages.

They called 3 times since yesterday. Last one came in at 7:40 am (WTF)... I did answer one time and it sounded like a giggling crank caller speaking in Dutch or German.

They called me 3 times within one hour today. They would not leave a message....

They called but didn't leave a message.