This morning I got a recorded phone call from an agitated female with an American accent who said she was ringing from my Internet service provider (whom of course she did not name). She told me that my Internet connection would be removed in 24 hours because my IP address had been "compromised from several countries". However I would be given a new IP address for free if I just pressed 1.

I must admit I was tempted to do so, if only to see what came next. Would I be told to go to some website and download "protective software"? But then I thought it might be something a lot simpler than that. Perhaps I would simply be connected to a premium rate line and played 20 minutes of muzak, for which I would later have to pay £100. That's surely as good a way to make a living as running a botnet or mining cryptocurrencies. So I hung up.

Has anyone else heard of this one?

Not that one in particular, but the other day a woman called me to inform me that my Windows computer had been compromised, and that if I wanted to save it, blah, blah, blah...

To which I said, "That's very interesting, as I don't run a Windows operating system on ANY of my computers!" She began stammering a bit, apologized, and then quickly hung up.

That's a very well-known one, though the calls I have fielded all come from men with Indian accents, ringing out of very noisy offices.

You should have played along with it, and said something like "ok, sounds bad, what do I do?!", and just pretended for as long as possible, before saying that. I would have, why not?

I wish they'd ring me up.

But in answer to the question; I remember when I was at a public library while I don't remember how I got to the site, or what site it was exactly, but the computer started making a beeping type sound, with a message supposedly from M$, saying something to the effect of "the system is compromised, call Microsoft on 1 such and such whatever number" or "the system has a virus/spyware on it, call Microsoft on 1 such and such whatever number". Of course the library was using Windows on their machines, but the message would have been total BS.

The other day someone called, actually it was a robocall, and it said my cellphone number had been restricted and I could no longer make any calls and to fix the problem, push 1. I imagine that was to get a live scam artist on the line.
I hung up.
On occasion I get a similar call, but supposedly about my credit card. I hang up.
For several months I've been getting calls, robocalls, but they are in Chinese. I hung up, but, finally, I started saying, I don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese. A few weeks later I got the same call in English. It is a scam supposedly involving the Chinese Consulate that I've read about. I hung up.
It was about two or three more weeks before they called again, this time in Chinese. This time I said, I'm not Chinese and I don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese. These calls always came on a Monday and they didn't call yesterday, so maybe, Ha!, they have finally taken me off their list.
Nah..... probably not.

My brother plays these people along and ends the call by telling them he would like to meet them in front of the local police station. They hang up.

"Hello, this is Lenny", and Lenny is some AI software made to fool scammers and telemarketers

https://www.youtube.com/user/ToaoDotNet/videos

I have turned some of them away by saying, "The person you are calling for has died."
At times, I have just put the phone near the TV (when it was on).

I did think of that, but I was afraid they'd just connect me to a premium rate line and then play me along.

I recently read a pointer suggesting that, if you get a suspected scam phone call, to answer the call and remain silent. If it's a human being, he or she will say something. If it's a robot and the robot does hear a human, it will click off.

I've been trying that and most of the unknown number/out of area code calls I've gotten have hung up after 10 or 20 seconds. A couple were real people and, after a second or two, the caller said, "er--hello?"

My landline provider has also in the past couple of months added SPAM? to the caller ID of certain incoming calls. Sometimes they are wrong, but mostly they get it right.

One trick they use is to use a local (to you) number.
If you don't know the number, but the area code and first three numbers are familiar, it is probably a spam call.
The robocall I received the other day saying my number had been restricted was from my phone number. That was the first clue.

I'm looking at the call log and most of them have used the local area code and the same prefix as my number.

I have a rule, if I do not recognize the number or if the number is blocked, then I do not answer the phone. If they are legitimate then they can leave a message.

I would have hung up too if they expected me to press a number. Because you could well be charged for the call if you did press the number. I meant if they didn't expect/ask you to press a number, which was what JWJones was suggesting since they didn't say anything about being told to press a number. Although clearly I wasn't there at the time, so I could be wrong about that.

Those videos posted by Okie, particularly the "Sam the Microsoft technician solves Lenny's computer" was hilarious! "So, are you sitting in front of your computer?" Love the bit at the end when the recorded message starts repeating itself, and "Sam from Microsoft" realizes that he's been conned himself...

That's my guess as to why they wanted you to press "1".

Robo-replies as well as robo-callers, this is starting to sound like Ray Bradbury's I, Mars.

If you haven't already, you should watch the "Lenny spends an astonishing 58 minutes with some tech". I ended up feeling sorry for the "tech", they couldn't even decide whether to ask "Lenny" to open up Internet Explorer or Chrome. But 58 minutes, and the "tech" still didn't cotton on after the message repeated itself the second or even third times. Who are you supposed to feel for there?