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Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#321

Post by distances »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #176
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Snail mail is so overloaded with spam it might as well be the same. The fact two fundamental and official mass communication channels are functionally useless is a sign of the rot in our country. Email is teetering on the void. Chat is balkanized and siloed, same with social media, unlike telephony there is no source monopoly or tradition of cross standards. Txt is the last bastion. It'll die in the next decade…

> The fact two fundamental and official mass communication channels are functionally useless is a sign of the rot in our country. It's a problem everywhere. This is what you get when you let the advertising industry operate unchecked. Scam calls and snail mail spam are just piggybacking on the fact that phone companies and postal services encourage and make money on telemarketing and mass marketing e-mails. It's goin…

It is not a problem everywhere. I do not get snail mail spam or call spam in Germany. For post it was enough to put up a sticker that forbids advertisements. No idea really why call/sms spam isn't a problem.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#322

Post by shwoopdiwoop »

tshaddox wrote: post #307
jacquesm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telco's could put a stop to this if they really wanted to. Start with disabling number spoofing for international calls, if the number presented isn't in the country of origin then reject the connection request. Another choke point is the gift card system.

It’s bonkers to me that gift cards are so readily available to enable these scams. There’s no way the gift card providers (Target, etc.) don’t know about this, but they go out of their way to make it as easy as possible and make sure there is zero support available for scams. It’s so infuriating. I know people who have lost hundreds of dollars to people impersonating US Social Security and immigration officers. The g…

Gift cards are hugely profitable for companies so I can see why they’d be happy to turn a blind eye.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#323

Post by cdolan »

pca wrote: post #221
tester457 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe their email domains, I don't think scammers can get a hold of domains like "microsoftsupport.com"

Doesn't Microsoft use a thousand different domains, most of which look sketchy? What if you receive an email from microsofts-support@live.com? Could you immediately tell that it is not legitimate compared to, e.g. contact@microsoftsupport.com?

My favorite:

aka.ms

Or “cudaserv.com”, which is auto enabled link scanning for Office365

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#324

Post by CoastalCoder »

rootusrootus wrote: post #320
CoastalCoder wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could someone explain why the reply from @calimac was killed? I'm guessing it has something to do with the snowshoe-spamming reference, but I'm totally in the dark.

Banned by sctb on Oct 16, 2016 for political ranting.

Wouldn't being banned prevent them from posting?

Or does it just insta-kill all their posts?

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#325

Post by zackmorris »

PaybackTony wrote: post #199

I built telecommunications systems / software for some time. The unfortunate truth here is that telecom carriers absolutely already have everything they need to largely put a stop to it but they knowingly ignore it. It's the biggest problem in the US because because of pricing. It's expensive to run outbound campaigns in almost any other country, and very cheap in the US (fractions of a penny per minute compared to 5…

This is a classic example of an unintended consequence of deregulation.

Normally we could petition our elected officials and get something done about it. But lobbyists have come to so completely dominate our legislative process that whole industries have effectively coopted the government through regulatory capture.

On top of that, they've hoodwinked half the population into thinking that regulation bad.

At this point, we can all remain hypervigilant and snoop on our grandparents and get sucked into various private industry scams like identity insurance. We can play games with switching carriers within the duopolies in our areas when they let scammers steal from us. We can project loudly on social media when someone across the world steals right from out of our bank accounts, and haggle with our credit card companies to charge it back and rip off some merchant so that we don't have to pay. This is how scams metastasize into protection rackets and authoritarianism.

Or we could like, make this all illegal and charge carriers directly when it happens. But that would cost rich people money. So rich people run propaganda campaigns to convince us that fines just get passed on to consumers. Which doesn't make any sense in a free market, where we could switch to a cheaper carrier that didn't get fined.

Once we see this from that meta level (that political controversy is rooted in misdirection and lies) it just gets so tiring to watch the same debates over and over. Maybe we need some rich people to step up and call out this nonsense (dragons give up their loot so easily). Maybe we need to organize and start some consumer unions that dictate to vendors how much we'll pay for their services until they shape up. Maybe we should get back to our geek roots and start a free peer to peer wireless network.

Huh, writing out this rant, I just had a thought. Where's the keystone in this? Political progress can't be hacked, so none of our instincts around quick fixes work. In other words, the half of the population that has the working solution has to somehow convince the other half to go along with it. That can be a long and painful process spanning decades.

So what does the other half want? What concession to them would result in getting legislation passed to solve this?

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#326

Post by bbbbb5 »

aardvarkr wrote: post #282
bbbbb5 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen how elaborate schemes small players on sites like crimemarket.is engage in for their scams?

Wow that site was trippy. It’s easy to forget what the dark side of the web looks like

Yeah, and this is almost the bottom of the food chain, the only people below crimemarket are those too dumb to use internet forums.

Anyone can easily buy European bank accounts opened with fake IDs, or money laundering services where you're provided an IBAN and receive a % of the money sent there to your cryptocurrency wallet.

Want a fake passport good enough to travel with? No problem, will just run you a 1000 euros.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#327

Post by vctrnk »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #211
Nextgrid wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason consumer SIMs should be able to call more than N distinct numbers in any 24h period. You can implement reasonable rate limits to prevent abuse. However, even if we assume that SIM boxes are a magic solution to carrier interventions, that still raises the cost from the current status-quo. Implement enough of these barriers and the entire scam operation becomes unprofitable and no longer worthwhile.

> There's no reason consumer SIMs should be able to call more than N distinct numbers in any 24h period. Oh jesus please no, whats next? Ther is no reason a consumer oven should cook more than 5 meals a day. There is no reason a consumer toasteer should toast mpre than 10 times a day. The bread you make tourself is unauthorised in a toaster

> Ther is no reason a consumer oven should cook more than 5 meals a day. There is no reason a consumer toasteer should toast mpre than 10 times a day.

Consumer ≠ business/commercial. A home oven (or toaster, fryer etc) isn't made for such use, a commercial one is. You should really spend the monies in commercial gear if you're gonna feed such hordes of people.

Similar thing with SIM cards. Why would a normal person be making 100+ calls a day on a simple, personal line? That's clearly commercial use and as such, it oughta be regulated somehow.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#328

Post by _-david-_ »

javajosh wrote: post #281
PaybackTony wrote: post #199

I built telecommunications systems / software for some time. The unfortunate truth here is that telecom carriers absolutely already have everything they need to largely put a stop to it but they knowingly ignore it. It's the biggest problem in the US because because of pricing. It's expensive to run outbound campaigns in almost any other country, and very cheap in the US (fractions of a penny per minute compared to 5…

So, I realize this is a big ask - but can you please write this up as a story and sent it to a major news outlet? My cynicism is already high, but I would not have suspected this of all things, that telcos would allow the elderly to be victimized to the tune of $10B to make a few pennies. Also, fuck gift cards. Make them illegal

>Also, fuck gift cards. Make them illegal

And when scammers go back to using Western Union are you going to ban that as well? When they ask a person to send them cash are you going to ban cash as well? Hell let's just ban all money to prevent this.

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#329

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

jyu wrote: post #303
PaybackTony wrote: post #199

I built telecommunications systems / software for some time. The unfortunate truth here is that telecom carriers absolutely already have everything they need to largely put a stop to it but they knowingly ignore it. It's the biggest problem in the US because because of pricing. It's expensive to run outbound campaigns in almost any other country, and very cheap in the US (fractions of a penny per minute compared to 5…

How many broken systems are the result of perverse incentives?

Absolutely everything: car dependency, affordable housing and healthcare, hard drugs, the environment, corporate tax evasion, energy, money laundering, immigration, good pay for nursing and teaching staff, etc.

"We can't fix X because then sector Y would suffer trillions in losses and jobs so it's best to keep the status quo and kick the can down the road."

Re: Americans duped into losing $10B by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: report

#330

Post by toast0 »

jeltz wrote: post #187
bbbbb5 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they can't. The scammers will just hire a random person from indeed/monster/whatever, ship them a SIM box and tell them to fill it with prepaids.

Yeah, I do not see how stopping the spoofing (which I am all for doing) would be anything but a minor inconvenience for them.

Stopping the spoofing makes it easier to provide actionable reports.

Right now, an actionable report really needs a traced call, which is hard to actually make.

Certainly, it doesn't get you right to a chargable person, but it gets you a lot more than today.

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