My Tech Gurus.

[John Sayers]

The other day I found a problem when I tried to add Microsoft updates. For some reason they wouldn't load and when I rebooted they were still wanting to install. I was also concerned because my puter was slowing down and showing signs of a virus or something.

I came across a company with a 1800 Aussie telephone number for My Tech Gurus who offered computer help. I dialled the number and was welcomed by a man who directed me to a website where a form appeared. He gave me a key number to enter and a chat box appeared on my screen. I told him my problem and he requested that I allow him to examine my computer - I was reluctant but finally accepted his offer. He then took over my desktop and started to examine my directory files etc. He showed me where 4 ports had been opened that should be closed.

 

He told me that for a fee he would fix it for me and that My Tech Gurus Inc was an international company and I was directed to their website where we filled in a payment form. Once the payment was accepted I sat back and watched a new technician, Lee, spend 4 hours to replace all my windows update files, destroy the virus and return my computer to it's top working order.

 

I now have a desktop Icon I can click on at any time 24/7, enter my code and I'll have an online technician to solve any further problems I may have.

 

I have since received phone calls from the company checking that the problem was solved - they are obviously an Indian company.

 

http://mytechgurus.com/

 

My alternative would have been to disconnect my computer and drive 65km (30 miles) to town, hand it over to a techo there and wait maybe a day or two to have it fixed. Plus they'd probably charge me more than I paid for a full year's cover by MTG.

 

Is this the future of tech support??

[A. Einstein]

Well John,

 

Something like that I fix in 10 minutes by erasing the system drive, and playing back the latest working OS backup.

[deanmass]

Stinks of identity thft scam beyond he reach of our laws...Pass.

[Anderton]

Well, I had a problem with my PC Audio Labs computer, and gave one of the techs permission to mess with it. Also did that with Wolfgang Kundrus (of Cubase/Studio One Pro fame) when I found a bug in an early version of Studio One Pro, and he wanted to be able to chase it down. In both cases, it was successful - PC Audio Labs found the problem, and Wolfgang found his bug.

 

BUT - these are people I know personally, and trust. I'm sure they didn't take any passwords while they were in there. However, there was something magical about watching a cursor move on my screen, and the next thing I knew, things were working.

[deanmass]

I would not let any " entitity" I did not know remote into my machine, especially out of the country AND having to give them cc info. You are braver than I.

 

Read this- it is important, very real and very valid

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic-security-a-worry-in-an-age-of-digital-espionage.html?pagewanted=all

[A. Einstein]

 

Read this- it is important, very real and very valid http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic-security-a-worry-in-an-age-of-digital-espionage.html?pagewanted=all

 

 

Paranoia much that poor fellow? On what medication is he? Maybe I miss this chemical agent in my body. I love people who think they are of such importance that some evil would steal their identity.

 

Just produced a piano solo album for a pianist who sees men in dark rain coats everywhere, not digital men, but analogue men. He had to pay an extra fee top of the producer fee that I work with him.

[deanmass]

I live near Detroit. Most people here work for car companies or their feeder industries. They travel to China. They take laptops full of proprietary data with them, many thinking it is safe due to IT staff that is contracted and does no give a {censored}, or NO IT staff. Thee are many documented cases of Chinese forgeries of entire FACTORIES. There is one company making an entire fake Ford F 150.

 

This stuff happens every day. 2 days after I posted this on my facebook account, I did a clean up/restore for a friend who had just spent 4 days with her company laptop in China. The entire tcp/ip stack was compromised, she had left Bluetooth on, so they came in that door first. Documents were missing, moved, corrupted. This is not paranoia, it is real. If you think it is not, dig deeper on your own. The point is, Americans and others with wealth or IP access are targets for a range or cyber theft/trespassing/snooping, etc. Their are guides online to harden your system. {censored}, kids in high school are downloading tools that would shock you. Packet sniffers, mac address spoofing, password crackers. Hit the Security Now Podcast. Steve Gibson is the man who coined the phrase Spyware. If you listen to 10 episodes of that show, you will know more than 99% of he computing public. I have listened to 80% of his total library. There are lots of bad guys out there.

[A. Einstein]

i never seen a fake Ford in China.

 

But there are many Ford on the street in China, but all come from here:

 

http://www.ford.com.cn/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=DFY/CN

 

GM, Roover, VW, Mercedes... all produced in China.

 

 

I have nothing to hide, and even thus all my work is connected to the net, total about 100 TB, what should a kid download that all for?

[A. Einstein]

 

There are lots of bad guys out there.

 

 

Yup, and some of this hacker kiddos get a visit from some real bad buys, and often the kiddos have never been seen after. But in China, no. The chances being shoot on the street in the US are bigger then being ripped off anything in China.

[deanmass]

Okey dokey.

[blue2blue]

This documents the JAC 43R, which looks, with small variations, just about like a Ford F-150: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/01/fake-in-china-an-f150-by-another-name/ Of course, that's a knock off not a counterfeit. Still, it appears likely that there was plenty of 'borrowing' going on, engineering-wise.

 

But, of course, those of us in audio know the problem isn't just about knock offs making naive consumers think they can get the same thing for loads less but about actual counterfeit products like gear, clothes, and other high ticket commodities. There's clearly a very large problem with fake Shure and other mics, fake Fenders, Gibsons, and other guitars and other music commerce items -- sometimes cloned by the very manufacturers contracted to make the originals. One can't cruise eBay without coming across a bunch of fake brand name products on a good day. But, of course, it can be hard to tell because the fakes are often very good. Sometimes you have to see the mics or other items opened up to see the differences. It would be silly to deny there is clearly a huge intellectual property theft problem in China, despite the central government's stated desire to clap down on it.

[nat whilk II]

I've done the same thing a time or two - let my computer be remotely operated by a service tech person. Yes, it's kind of a weird experience, but no harm ensued. But there are two reasons I'm reluctant to do this -

 

1 - it's not that I mistrust the intentions of the particular service tech person or even their department or company. But it does mean a route into my computer has been mapped and used by a third party, and it's a certainty that, should that route be hijacked by some baddie, that, as far as my computer is concerned, I'm at great risk.

 

2 - personal data is not 100% secure once it gets in the hands of any third party - we all know this. There was a case in Texas a couple years ago where - oops! the Comptroller's office accidentally let the names, addresses, and tax ID numbers of a few hundred thousand businesses and their owners become accessible through the government's public website by anyone who was savvy enough to access it. They sent out an apology, that said something ludicrous like "there has been no reported instances of any harm coming to anyone from this inadvertent release of personal data".

 

I'm personally not very paranoid about all this (hiding in the crowd, I know), but I've always thought I might be a bit safer if I were a bit more paranoid, given the fact that the most internet-paranoid person I know works for Oracle, developing the huge search engines and unimaginably huge databases that allow Google and other big search-engine outfits to do their magic. Talking to him about all this - he just shakes his head slowly and says, "you have NO IDEA how much information about you and everyone else out there is being analyzed, indexed, in the process of being made-ready for use by the highest bidder (or for free to the best hacker)...it's not a matter of if, but when...these huge databases of analyzed personal data will become the most valuable and powerful commodity in the world - forget nuclear weapons and engineered diseases..." :eek:scary stuff!! If even half of what this guy fears is possible....

 

Remember, a spoonful of denial helps the arsenic go down!

 

 

nat whilk ii

[A. Einstein]

I don't even see why any guitar maker should pay licences to Fender or Gibson. Stradivary also doesn't get licences for the blue and pink Yamaha fiddles which have the same form.

 

About car manufacturer in China, there are dozens of them. As well VW, BMW, Mercedes, Roover, Chrysler, GM, Nissan... have their own fabrication in China. For example BMW want to stop the import of a look alike BMW made by ShuangHuan Automobile Co, but what will BMW do when Germans will buy BMWs and Mercedes from the China plants. It is only a matter if time until we buy also all cars from China. Chinese Mercedes and Bentley are fabulous and in the same quality as the cars from the German and VW plants.

 

Then, China government ordered 80'000 Jaguar in England. For all those European and US car manufacturer it's Hobson's choice, sink or swim.

 

 

 

This documents the JAC 43R, which looks, with small variations, just about like a Ford F-150: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/01/fake-in-china-an-f150-by-another-name/ Of course, that's a knock off not a counterfeit. Still, it appears likely that there was plenty of 'borrowing' going on, engineering-wise. But, of course, those of us in audio know the problem isn't just about knock offs making naive consumers think they can get the same thing for loads less but about actual counterfeit products like gear, clothes, and other high ticket commodities. There's clearly a very large problem with fake Shure and other mics, fake Fenders, Gibsons, and other guitars and other music commerce items -- sometimes cloned by the very manufacturers contracted to make the originals. One can't cruise eBay without coming across a bunch of fake brand name products on a good day. But, of course, it can be hard to tell because the fakes are often very good. Sometimes you have to see the mics or other items opened up to see the differences. It would be silly to deny there is clearly a huge intellectual property theft problem in China, despite the central government's stated desire to clap down on it.

 

[MrKnobs]

 

Is this the future of tech support??

 

 

I hope not.

 

My brother had the "fake alert" virus on his business computer, got it right during Tax season (he's an accountant). It's very hard to give someone with low computer savvy instructions over the phone (I would kill myself after an hour of trying, I think) so I referred him to McAfee's remote support service.

 

Apparently the Indian techs get allocated a certain amount of time per problem they can bill for, so to a man (or woman) they tended to "lose the call" after about 15 min or so, and calling back he always got a different tech. These guys and girls (possibly) worked on his computer remotely and the ultimate result was complete loss of his entire hard drive, no survivors.

 

He's not too happy with me as I should have let him drive to Austin so I could fix it for him.

 

Terry D.

[blue2blue]

 

I don't even see why any guitar maker should pay licences to Fender or Gibson. Stradivary also doesn't get licences for the blue and pink Yamaha fiddles which have the same form. About car manufacturer in China, there are dozens of them. As well VW, BMW, Mercedes, Roover, Chrysler, GM, Nissan... have their own fabrication in China. For example BMW want to stop the import of a look alike BMW made by ShuangHuan Automobile Co, but what will BMW do when Germans will buy BMWs and Mercedes from the China plants. It is only a matter if time until we buy also all cars from China. Chinese Mercedes and Bentley are fabulous and in the same quality as the cars from the German and VW plants. Then, China government ordered 80'000 Jaguar in England. For all those European and US car manufacturer it's Hobson's choice, sink or swim.

Obviously making a product that cops the visual style of another product is generally not a problem -- unless there is an attempt to confuse the purchasing consumer with fake or near-lookalike logos, making him thinking he's getting the real thing.

 

But there clearly are two legitimate ongoing problems: outright counterfeit products masquerading as the real thing and industrial espionage/IP 'embezzling' where the proprietary design and fabrication materials for products being manufactured under license in China or elsewhere are essentially stolen and used to create other, often competing products using malappropriated proprietary design or manufacturing materials.

[A. Einstein]

Chinese are not different then other people, some buy a real Rolex and some can only afford a copy

 

apart from that, all things manufacrured in China are automatically a Made in China and China copyright, no matter how greddy Westeners want to maximize their profit by having it manufacrired in China, thos ecats would better get an lawyer who can read Chinese law

[deanmass]

Oh Jebus Christmas. I have given you specific, legitimate examples of what to watch for as a friendly warning. If you are too naive to believe it and take precautions, rock on. It is not intended as a slam on the Chinese. It was a travel warning because there have been SPECIFIC folks targeted. But for Christ sakes, they knocked off an entire TRUCK. It is not a one off thing...It is a standard business practice there.

 

The point is, letting anyone remote into your computer that you do not know personally is worth handling with EXTREME caution.

[WRGKMC]

IP techs do this on company networks all the time, its nothing new.

For my home unit, I would have gone into safe mode, removed the virus,

and done a system restore. If that didnt work I'd install my backup drive

which I have cloned and ready to go at a moments notice.

 

One thing I do suggest you doing is shut down the remote access under services.

That port is still open and cant be shut down by the tech that did the remote.

Anyone running VPN can get into your computer and do what that guy was doing

as long as that service is running.

 

First click on my computer, select remote setting (if using vista or win 7) then

select thr right tab and untick the remote settings.

 

Second, go to control panel, admin tools, sercices,

Disable Internet connection sharing, Net.tcp port sharing and most important, routing and remote access.

Its the last one that lets them in and access your unit. If the service isnt there and the ports are shut down you dont have to worry

as much. I'd also check my firewall. Firewalls can get shut down through stelth commands. Make sure its running and nothing odd is shut off.

[A. Einstein]

 

Obviously making a product that cops the visual style of another product is generally not a problem -- unless there is an attempt to confuse the purchasing consumer with fake or near-lookalike logos, making him thinking he's getting the real thing. But there clearly are two legitimate ongoing problems: outright counterfeit products masquerading as the real thing and industrial espionage/IP 'embezzling' where the proprietary design and fabrication materials for products being manufactured under license in China or elsewhere are essentially stolen and used to create other, often competing products using malappropriated proprietary design or manufacturing materials.

 

 

I don't think that any consumer thinks that when he gets a fake iPhone which runs only two of the many features an Apple iPhone has, that he believes he has the real thing, same when one biys a fake Ferrari. What I like about the Chinese is, they don't give a {censored} about any of that. Their policy is to be independent of any foreign bull{censored}ting, and doing everything themself no matter what effort it costs. Dealing with Chinese is a sink or swim situation for foreigners.

 

Same with the rare earth elements, they have 95% of that, and that they limited export has to do that they want to attract foreign technology companies to their new "silicon valley", means: "Hey boys, either you produce electronics here or you don't produce all." Also all manufactured in China is the property of China. That means Apple, Nike, Samsung, Mercedes, Roover, Dell and so on, is all intellectual property of China. Means also, "Hey fools, either you produce here or you can't afford to buy the by you designed products. Next 10 Years plan is that they design everything themself.

 

What you read in Western media is nothing else then anti-Chinese propaganda; non of the Western CEO would dare to mention anything like that on a meeting in China, or they would be sent home immediately. Germans {censored} in their pants thinking that China exports Mercedes and BMWs to the whole world.

[deanmass]

 

IP techs do this on company networks all the time, its nothing new. For my home unit, I would have gone into safe mode, removed the virus, and done a system restore. If that didnt work I'd install my backup drive which I have cloned and ready to go at a moments notice. One thing I do suggest you doing is shut down the remote access under services. That port is still open and cant be shut down by the tech that did the remote. Anyone running VPN can get into your computer and do what that guy was doing as long as that service is running. First click on my computer, select remote setting (if using vista or win 7) then select thr right tab and untick the remote settings. Second, go to control panel, admin tools, sercices, Disable Internet connection sharing, Net.tcp port sharing and most important, routing and remote access. Its the last one that lets them in and access your unit. If the service isnt there and the ports are shut down you dont have to worry as much. I'd also check my firewall. Firewalls can get shut down through stelth commands. Make sure its running and nothing odd is shut off.

 

 

I know this. I do it daily. But, having a foreign company do it, charge your cc for it, is risky. I did not dream that this thread would go in either of these directions. Einstein, your comments about the Chinese not giving a {censored}? If you really believe this is ok, they I just don't think you are wired up right. China needs us as much as we need them. As for the rare earth metals, that is an issue. But the thing is, from what I know, everything you have described is corporate IP theft, which is exactly the point of the hacking article, which leads back to your point of this being their plan, to make everything themselves. They are short cutting by stealing our work, so in short, if that is what they are doing, {censored} them.