(517) 555-0142

A complete nuisance!
Should not be allowed!

I used my standard strategy when mystery call comes in and said nothing. After 15 seconds of silence a robo-caller hangs up. Bloch that number. A real person says something in a few seconds. In this case someone did speak and said it was Microsoft Technical Help: My computer had sent them some error messages and they could fix it. I knew that this was the standard "Your computer is sending error messages but we can fix it" Scam. The first level non native English speaker gets you to open your error log viewer; mine had over 11,000. In 5 years you accumulate a lot of non critical errors. I was deliberately "stupid' about getting there, Had to do it several times. "Could you spell eventvwr again please" Then I was passed to the technical guy. After 5 minutes of misinterpreted instructions I got to the error log . I told him there were only 3 errors. He asked if this was my computer? I said mine mine was a Mac could he fix that one? It was a laptop and I had to set it up. I put him on hold for 10 min. Then came back and told him my wife had taken it to work. We then continued with my PC. I asked what OS I was using. He did not know. I acted confused. Lost the log again and had to "find" it. How are you going ot fix it if you don't know the OS or make of the computer? He then knew the "Jig was up". He hung up. I wasted 30 minutes of his scamming time. The 555 exchange is a spoofed number. See that and you know it is a scam.

Got this scam on my ans machine.

Any phone number with a "555" prefix is a fake. Notice how in movies and TV all phone numbers are 555-xxxx. I have a fax machine connected to my phone line and when I see a number like this, I just have the fax answer it. Your number will be marked off as a fax line and you'll never get another call from that particular scammer again

It's a scam and the number is fake. 555-0100 through 555-0199 are fictitious numbers designated for TV and movies. The caller wasn't really calling from 555-0142, they just made it LOOK like they were.