Apparently, this is a scam that’s been going around for a couple of years now, and can be especially dangerous for unsuspecting, less computer-savvy target victims. While many of the scam reports I’ve come across seem to have targeted England and Australia, it would appear that the scammers are now targeting more Americans as well. Today, we received one such call. The scam goes as follows:

You get a call from some Indian guy with a generic name such as “Adam Smith” who explains to you in horribly broken English that he’s a registered Microsoft technician and has received a call alerting him that your IP address is the source for serious attacks on their servers due to multiple computer virus infections on your end. If you ask for any information on the source or target IP addresses involved, the person will attempt to deflect the question, and inform you that he/she is unauthorized to provide you that information!

They will proceed to try convincing you that your computer is full of viruses (based on some standard status and error messages automatically generated by your computer), and they try to get you to grant them complete access to your entire computer (passwords, credit cards, everything) via the free “Ammyy Admin” remote desktop control software. If you don’t agree to buy their crappy, useless, and thieving “support services”, they’ll use the computer access you openly granted them to screw up your computer and randomly delete stuff (watch them erasing things off the desktop in this video).

‘Nuff said… BE WARNED, ALWAYS BE WARY, and never fall for some schmuck on the phone trying to con information out of you, or get you to run any type of software on your PC.

Watch the video to see exactly how this scam plays out.

(Interloper) “Mr. Achuthan has been arguably the most accurate economic forecaster over the past five years and perhaps more importantly, is apparently using new analytical techniques and indicators – his emphasis on short and long-leading economic indicators is an excellent example. As he noted this morning, he was virtually alone among prominent economists in predicting a slowdown for the latter half of 2011, even if his predicted official recession has yet to become evident.”

” .. Achuthan presented his view that despite recent stronger data a US recession was still on tap, followed by Steve Liesman (fairly) asking ‘What about recent stronger GDP and consumer spending data’, followed by Achuthan saying that it didn’t matter because there is contagion in the data whereby more indicators were turning negative, followed by Liesman asking (again fairly) ‘like what’, and Achuthan responding something like ‘it doesn’t matter what, it matters how many‘. .. Liesman continued to badger his guest with ‘what do investors do today?’ ”

“.. Achuthan, in other words, is telling investors you something you will not hear from any employee of a brokerage or investment bank (well, maybe SocGen): wait.”

“.. My real issue is with those who will complain, ‘Why would I listen to that guy? He can’t even tell me which indicator he’s basing his conclusion on’. These people want THE ANSWER, stated bluntly, with conviction. To these people I respond; there is nothing you should be more afraid of than a market pundit who is certain.”

“Certainty is a tremendous marketing tool but there is a reason that the ‘con‘ in con man is short for confidence. Remember that it would only take one highly-leveraged trade to make someone wealthy enough to never work again. This implies that if the ‘certain’ dude (and its 99% of the time a dude) was really 100% sure, they would be leveraged 200-1 on the trade and, if it were successful, you’d never see them again outside of Saint Tropez-situated photos in celebrity magazines. In truth they are not sure – it’s a marketing gimmick to attract your investment dollars.”

“We are naturally attracted to certainty and we want to believe that someone has the answer because psychologically the random nature of markets is repellent. But in the end it is most often a trap and all investors should remember what a portfolio manager once told me: ‘People don’t like to hear it but we are in the probability game, not the certainty game.’ ”

Full Story: Liesman vs Achuthan and why investors should be terrified of certainty (Interloper)