"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| Were you thinking of a case where they want
| access to your computer? Even then, if you let them
| run some kind of remote desktop, you'd have to be
| a very clever hacker with knowledge of bugs in
| that software to attack them back.
|
| ... yes, that's what I was thinking of. Pretend to do what they ask but
| instead, upload something nasty. However, as you say, almost certainly
| not possible.

One of my brothers fell for that one. They downloaded
a remote desktop program but only used it to move things
around and open windows, in order to convince him that
they were, indeed, Microsoft and that they did, indeed,
have control over his computer. They didn't try to upload
anything and as near as I could tell didn't change anything.

Fortunately, my brother's a starving artist and had no credit
card number to give them. That was all they were interested
in. With that particular scam, and the "you're infected!" type
of scams, they seem to try hard to act legit and get people
to pay them willingly.