Trust Me: I Work For Microsoft

This Post is absolutly not about Cryptocurrencey.
So move along now nothing to see here.

It's about life and a future and scammers.
You go to school and then you go to college or University.
You get your degree and then its all about scoring that all important job.

But not if you live in India, it seems.

How about:
" In 2016, in one municipality, 19,000 people applied for 114 jobs; among those competing to be a street sweeper were thousands of college graduates, some with engineering and MBA degrees. In the same year, more than 1.5 million people applied for 1,500 jobs with a state-owned bank, and more than 9 million took entrance exams for fewer than 100,000 jobs on the railways."

For fuck sake 9 million CVs to plow through!
You would need to employ an army of people just to read through the CV's. But we know they didn't, as all those jobs where already taken before they advertisement went out. It's what I would do. It's what you would do.
Take care of your family and friends before the great rabble get involved.

So decision time. You are standing there with your piece of paper and no job.
When someone says do you want to earn some money. Your answer would have to be yes.
I've gotten these Scam calls. Most people have gotten these scammer calls.
Telling you that your PC is infected.
Or you owe money to some mysterious company.
I've often wondered who these guys/gals are.
Do they know they are scamming naive people.

It turns out they do know. And some do not give a fuck.
They've gone to school and played the game.
When they have finished there is nothing for them in India.
And outside India there is Trump blocking an avenue for all of the these very clever people just trying to to get out and earn an honest dollar.
So between a rock and another rock and a very hard place, they decide to take the money.
And if it means frightening the shit out of little oul ladies to pay-up for Anti-Virus software they don't need or fictitious IRS Tax bills.
They go with the Scam.

I cannot condone it.

But now, at least, I do have a better understanding of why they do it and it is happening.

Read On:

"In 2016, Microsoft published a global survey showing that two in every three people had been exposed to a tech-support scam in the preceding 12 months. Americans lose around $1.5bn to tech-support scams every year; 86 percent of them originate in India. They usually involve infecting a computer user’s web browser with a pop-up message that tells them their machine has been compromised, and the only way to save it is to call this number. The person who picks up recites a script, asking the panicking caller for remote access to their computer. Once connected, they present regular files as deadly threats. “We also run fake software on the computer to make up viruses, trojans, malware. Then we tell them that if they don’t buy our security products – $299 for a year, $399 for two years – the computer will become unusable,” said Tanwar, who worked on a tech-support scam alongside 500 others at a call centre in Gurugram. His brief was to make $500 from every call, and his incentive was 1,000 rupees for every $1,000, or 1.5% percent of the take. “The moment you put on your headphones, your supervisor tells you: ‘You are scammers. You have to trap the customer, no matter how,’” he said."

From the Guardian article:

Using the back of one of our fake resumés, she wrote down a jumble of words that followed up on the promise of the ad: “International exposure, night shift, 20,000 rupees [£232] salary, 30 percent increment every three months.” She even gave us a slip of paper confirming our employment: “We are pleased to inform you that you are hereby selected for CCE (Customer Care Executive) in the BPO department of our organisation.” The slip did not state the name of the organisation.

Unlike most jobseekers who come to these agencies, we pushed our interviewer for details of the company we had been hired by. Irritated, she blurted out a name, but nothing else. When can we join the company, we asked. Next week, she said. But before that, we would have to go to another part of town for our one-day training – details to follow in another text – and before we left the room, we had to give her 500 rupees each for coming this far along.

The text message came in as promised, and directed us to an even more obscure address in south-east Delhi for the “training”. When we arrived, we queued up and paid 1,000 rupees to enter the classroom. We sat down and were asked to introduce ourselves by our trainer, a young man in a snug T-shirt, loose jeans and spiked hair. He then pointed out numerous flaws in our speech and confidence. He gave us a formula for the perfect introduction (“your name, where you are from, where you live, your education, your experience, and your hobbies”) and the best way to end it: “Thank you. That’s all about me.”

Spoken English is key to a call-centre job, he reminded us. He said there was no word in English he couldn’t pronounce: “Zoo, Alpha, Nancy, pleasure, treasure, vision.” He went on: “My father went to zoo and we saw green dinosaur. My favourite movie is Prince of Persia. It’s my pleasure to have treasure.” When he had finished showing off, he told us all about his personal journey, from a village in Bihar to a call-centre in Gurugram, a technology hub just outside Delhi. “It doesn’t matter where you are from if you have a plan,” he said. Someone in the class asked him what his plan was. “I work for money,” he said. “Career should follow money.”

Later, I would remember one of the first things he had said after entering the class. “How many of you know the meaning of ‘manipulate’? Have you ever taken someone for a ride?” By the time he was done, most people in the class looked baffled by how little they had learned about their jobs in spite of paying handsomely for the training. All they wanted was to start the jobs they had been promised. But we were then led to another floor, divided into groups and sent for a fresh round of interviews.

This time we faced actual representatives of companies interested in hiring us. When it was my turn, I told my interviewer that I had already been hired by her company. She said she would still like to be sure of something. “Sell me this phone,” she said, pointing at the mobile phone in my hand. I did my best to expound on its battery life and camera. After challenging my colleague to the same task, she said we should wait for a call from the company.

Many jobseekers leave their training with appointment letters asking them to report to work the next week. These letters never mention the name or address of the company. Everyone is told to expect another text message with further details. One young man we met that day, Pradeep Saluja, left the building thinking that he was about to start working in customer service for Amazon, as the job ad had promised.

When I called him a month later, Saluja told me that the job had in fact turned out to be in a small office with a strange name, in Gurugram. He was given a script to memorise and asked to get on the phone, along with 50 other “executives” of a similar age.

The job was easy, he said. All he had to do was call people in the US from a list, introduce himself as Charles, and tell them they were under federal investigation for tax evasion. One out of 10 people would freak out, he said. At the first hint of panic in their voice, Saluja told them he was going to transfer the call to a different department, where one of his seniors would help them pay their taxes through an online money transfer.

Read The Whole Article:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/02/the-scammers-gaming-indias-overcrowded-job-market

Images Courtesy of Pixabay