Scammers know the names of the householders they call in a bid to dupe them into believing they are dealing with genuine callers.
This is alarming as many older and vulnerable people will fall for these elaborate scams.
We caught the scammers and recorded the call in a bid to show others exactly how realistic they appear.
As you will hear, a woman says fraudulently that she is from Microsoft and she is claiming that our computer has some security issues.
She invited us to log on, which we didn’t do – and we spent some time confusing them.
You can hear the caller saying: “She has no clue!” (Oh yes, we do, love!)
She began to get impatient, so she transferred us to a ‘senior technician’ by the fake name of ‘Steve Johnston.’
He claimed he had the unique licence ID and that he was an authorised service provider.
‘Steve’ claimed the computer was infected.
We then pretended he had the wrong address and that we worked in cyber security, then we made up a fake address and threw in a little more confusion.
‘Steve Johnston’ began to act in a threatening manner, claiming he would block the computer and even mobile phones if we did not comply with his demands.
And remember a genuine caller will not swear at you!
“Please get off my line. I’m the one who’s going to block your computers,” he said.
“You are not bloody concerned.”
This is one of thousands of calls that are answered across Northern Ireland daily and police are reminding people to never give out personal details or allow anyone access to their computer.
These scammers prey on older and vulnerable people who are being conned out of thousands of pounds each day. In February alone £391,571 was stolen from people across the country in 43 separate incidents.
This disturbing number accounts for only a small proportion of the crimes that have been spotted by householders and reported to the police.
It is feared that many more crimes may have gone unreported.
Please be alert and pass on to family that a genuine company will never phone and ask you to connect to the internet. Hang up and call police on the non-emergency 101.