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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

#201

Post by lukevp »

code_runner wrote: post #117
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.

Edit: I was thinking of a totally different gift card scam. Whoops Gift cards should require some amount of destruction in order to get to the actual barcode… something to make tampering obvious. The same way clothes have a little ink exploder the clerk removes… just a quick easy step that is destructive to the packaging… but still presentable when you give it to someone

Gift cards don’t have a value until you purchase them, the package is meaningless. The barcode is scanned and the value is added when the transaction is completed.

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

#202

Post by sfifs »

cute_boi wrote: post #84

These days whenever I hear Indian voice, I just reject call. They way they target grandparents is surreal. One day they told my my friends parents that their children is in accident and they have to pay in gift cards. It is so distressing to elderly people. US must take strict actions and call out India publicly. Elderly people are weak, education isn't going to solve the scam problem. Scammers must be punished harsl…

The basic problem is that in highly un-regulated & legalistic economy & polity like the United States, failures such as these are not easily corrected especially where everyone except the weak make money. Everyone who could stop this is making money, the telco operators, amazon, the banks and everyone is weighing the cost of taking any legal or other action and is maximizing their own gain... nobody is really looking to is this socially good.

Contrast this with how the Singapore government in a similarly highly capitalist economy dealt with this - basically telling banks - "you'd better make good the consumers & deal with your holes or else" https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/mas-will-consider-...

In many ways in domain after domain, US nowadays seems to act as the "economic proving ground of the world" where lax regulation allows a million ideas to flourish. Then folks in other parts of the world seem to take the best winning ideas, figure out how to make it work in a socially & governmentally acceptable way in other parts of the world and out-compete the US originators (eg. how Uber, Lyft, Amazon, US based social media firms have effectively been pushed out of dominance in Asia)

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

#203

Post by bbbbb5 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #197
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.

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.

And what do you propose would be such a reasonable rate limit?

>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.

Why do you assume that the call routing is a meaningful cost to these operations? For all we know they spend less than 0.01% of their revenue on call routing.

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

#204

Post by jacquesm »

bbbbb5 wrote: post #186
jacquesm wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You tackle these things one-obstacle-at-the-time. Telco's are borderline complicit in this today, they don't have to be. Note that in some countries these scams are far more prevalent than in others, they'll go for the low hanging fruit first just like any other business. Make it harder and definitely there will be a response and then you aim to tackle that one. Shipping a SIM box would already be much more work than…

> Note that in some countries these scams are far more prevalent than in others, they'll go for the low hanging fruit first just like any other business The reason for this is language barriers, it's not some countries doing things better than others. > Shipping a SIM box would already be much more work than just changing a number in a database They don't even actually need to ship one, there are thousands of them op…

Yes, but that would at least put them at the same level as burner phones with a physical presence required in the target country (or close to it).

Anyway, since you are willing to shoot down each and every suggestion in this thread short of rolling over and accepting the damage how would you tackle it?

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

#206

Post by ryandrake »

e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #119
ideavalodation wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't support any kinda scam to begin with but what should other countries do to USA for exporting MLMs, ponzi scheme, crypto scams and other trash

I was looking for the perfect analogy and this is it - would India and other countries be justified for sanctioning the US government for something private companies did? Sanctions are something governments do to each other and this is an issue between private citizens. It just gets messy because it's international, but AFAIK we can't do anything from the US aside from investigating to get suspects then requesting ex…

The Indian government is pretty clearly complicit. At a large enough scale, there is no difference between permitting something and encouraging that thing. And other countries are free to impose economic sanctions on the USA for the shitty things it allows/encourages US companies to do.

If there is a market incentive for companies to do something bad, and the government can, but does not act to correct/neutralize that incentive, then the government should be blamed. India is a democracy, so that blame also falls on the electorate.

As a US voter I grudgingly accept my ~4e-9 proportion of the blame for the shitty things the US allows.

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

#207

Post by petepete »

balls187 wrote: post #13

To temper the potential for anti-indian rhetoric, US authorities work side by side with local Indian authorities to shut these down. Mark Rober has a few videos dedicated to going after several of these scam call centers, and most recently 3 major ones were shut down and their owners arrested.

Those videos by Mark Rober mainly build on the work done by Jim Browning.

https://www.youtube.com/c/JimBrowning/featured

ScammerPayback also does an incredible job.

https://www.youtube.com/@ScammerPayback

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

#208

Post by geraldwhen »

silisili wrote: post #161
cute_boi wrote: post #84

These days whenever I hear Indian voice, I just reject call. They way they target grandparents is surreal. One day they told my my friends parents that their children is in accident and they have to pay in gift cards. It is so distressing to elderly people. US must take strict actions and call out India publicly. Elderly people are weak, education isn't going to solve the scam problem. Scammers must be punished harsl…

As bad as it is to say, I mostly do the same. You'd think India would be on top of this and come down hard. If folks just start associating Indian accents as 'scammers', businesses abroad that currently rely on outsourcing support and other services are going to eventually have to pull out. You can't run effective customer support if the customer assumes you're a bad actor just because of your voice and hangs up.

I’m not sure businesses care. Everyone I know associates Indian accent with either scam or useless call center rep who can’t actually see the account or help in any way. India is often given the informational customer service, and only Americans can make account changes. Or someone not in India at any rate.

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

#209

Post by colejohnson66 »

silisili wrote: post #161
cute_boi wrote: post #84

These days whenever I hear Indian voice, I just reject call. They way they target grandparents is surreal. One day they told my my friends parents that their children is in accident and they have to pay in gift cards. It is so distressing to elderly people. US must take strict actions and call out India publicly. Elderly people are weak, education isn't going to solve the scam problem. Scammers must be punished harsl…

As bad as it is to say, I mostly do the same. You'd think India would be on top of this and come down hard. If folks just start associating Indian accents as 'scammers', businesses abroad that currently rely on outsourcing support and other services are going to eventually have to pull out. You can't run effective customer support if the customer assumes you're a bad actor just because of your voice and hangs up.

> You'd think India would be on top of this and come down hard.

They "try", but the scammers just pay off the cops

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