171–180 of 221 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they did that, then there would be no incentive for customers to choose arbitration over filing a dispute with their credit card.
Arbitration is likely even more expensive than a dispute.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there anything in the arbitration clauses forbidding them from cancelling your account if you invoke arbitration (regardless of whether you prevail or fail?).
Well they have to abide by the arbitration and any good arbitrator will put a good faith clause in the agreement.
Your only power to encourage them to fix this is to do the thing they're begging you not to: dispute the charges . If a threshold of Twilio customers dispute charges, Twilio loses the ability to process credit cards at a lower risk rate, then with all but high risk processors, then may lose the ability to process them at all. If enough of their customers are getting burned, and enough dispute, Twilio would no longer…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't just as simple as 'premium rate numbers'. Some of the criminals behind these attacks will have access to the phone network. They'll pick an expensive route, like a range of phone numbers in Georgia (the country) from the USA, and offer a cheaper route to it. The system will start using their route for those calls. They'll accept all calls to that route, get paid, and never actually connect any calls. That gi…
How is this a workable system!? Why would anyone pay them. This seems like fraud on the part of the phone networks for billing for service that was never provided or should have been provided cheaper.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They know how much to bill the customer I don't mean to do Twilio's work of defending them, but in my experience it's possible they actually don't know how much to bill the customer. What they may know is the generalized per-minute or per-session rate they've agreed with another operator alongside a general "premium rate numbers will be settled at a later date" kind of clause. My employer got bit by this several ye…
Fun fact: +1 is not a country, but all of North America. For a long time it was entirely possible to dial a perfectly ordinary looking +1 258 xxxxxxx number and get charged up the wazoo because (258) is Antigua and Barbuda, not New Jersey.
Ugh.
We've been hit by this at work as well. We had to add CAPTCHA and a several other techniques to defend against this. How it works: 1. Attacker leases 1 or more premium rate numbers in an international country. - Attacker can lease a premium rate number for as little as $10/month - Typically, the attacker gets to keep 70% of the money generated by the premium rate number. 2. Attacker then finds companies with OTP (One…
It isn't just as simple as 'premium rate numbers'. Some of the criminals behind these attacks will have access to the phone network. They'll pick an expensive route, like a range of phone numbers in Georgia (the country) from the USA, and offer a cheaper route to it. The system will start using their route for those calls. They'll accept all calls to that route, get paid, and never actually connect any calls. That gi…
Edit: Oh, you're talking about number hijacking. I think they usually aren't offering termination services though, usually it goes hand in hand with the kind of fraud described in the OP.
We've been hit by this at work as well. We had to add CAPTCHA and a several other techniques to defend against this. How it works: 1. Attacker leases 1 or more premium rate numbers in an international country. - Attacker can lease a premium rate number for as little as $10/month - Typically, the attacker gets to keep 70% of the money generated by the premium rate number. 2. Attacker then finds companies with OTP (One…
I don't understand why twilio cannot simply set a flag on their phone company account saying "under no circumstances will we pay for these shenanigans", and why the phone company billing stuff cannot simply block sms messages to such scam accounts. In particular, email (smtp) to sms gateways exist. Why doesn't twilio just use one of those (and maybe pre-arrange a flat monthly payment to avoid being blocked for going…
Everyone has the idea "just don't pay for fraud" but in practice it is difficult because there are many different carriers in the typical international call chain, which means to dispute charges you need everyone to agree. Also carriers have long term agreements with eachother about billing and it is not as easy to just dispute the charges like you can with a credit card.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Disputing the charges is always a nuclear option. They may never do business with you after that. This is something that I think needs to be regulated. I'm not saying that this should be the case for a company the size of Twilio, but I definitely think that a company the size of Apple/Google/Samsung should not be able to ruin your life because you had temerity to stand up to them and dispute a charge.
I’m particularly afraid of it on Amazon, where a $20 dispute could nix my 800+ book Kindle library.
https://nitter.kylrth.com/benjaminnetter/status/153085292888... If you want to read the tweet on how it works.
Now if only I could sign one of those premium rate numbers to get robocalled …