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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

#211

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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.

> 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

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

#212

Post by honkler »

balls187 wrote: post #113
weakfortress wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anti-Indian rhetoric"? The scams literally originate in India, and are masterminded by Indians. Further, the police are often paid off and rarely do anything about it. When enough fuss is caused about one or two they stop them and then another two crop up somewhere else. If you study the history of organized crime, especially in America, this mirrors the Italian mob once they got control of the police. This is organ…

You missed my point. These call centers are a problem. One that requires cooperation between the US and India to resolve.

yeah. we'll sanction india, and then india will cooperate.

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

#213

Post by frontman1988 »

Is it bad that I don't feel sorry for the Americans getting scammed given the obscene wealth inequality that exists between the two countries? Some wealth shifting to a poor country with millions of malnourished people might actually be a net positive to the world? Morality is complicated for sure.

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

#214

Post by jfk13 »

tester457 wrote: post #145
grammers wrote: post #82

I once had an issue with Microsoft at work and had to get MS support to help me. They literally called me on the landline and asked for remote control of my computer. It was totally legit. Still I felt uncomfortable and asked for a Teams session with screensharing instead (and not remote access), but this 'was not possible'. So, how are people to distinguish between 'fake' calls and real ones if companies still use s…

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

Why not?

OK, looks like "microsoftsupport.com" is taken, but GoDaddy is happy to offer me alternatives like microsoftsupport.app, microsoftsupport.site, microsoftsupport.tv, or microsoftsupport.uk that should work equally well for scam purposes. Or microsoftpcsupport.com is available, if a ".com" is particularly desirable.

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

#215

Post by JTbane »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #120
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…

You're a lot more patient than me. I've stopped answering calls from unknown numbers. I get 3-4 calls per day, which luckily I can auto-ignore on iOS.

Yeah, no, this works great until you get an actually important call from a previously unknown number (hospital, job interview, etc.)

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

#216

Post by bbbbb5 »

jacquesm wrote: post #204
bbbbb5 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Can you give a single example of similar fraud being successfully tackled? Not just the scammers being caught, but the entire scam being rendered unprofitable.

European authorities haven't managed to do anything about the car selling scams Romanians have been running for decades now. Nobody has managed to do anything about the Nigerian prince scams. BEC with truly shitty phishing pages keeps on growing and growing.

The best bet would be for US authorities to force India to crack down on these activities and prevent these scams from operating at an industrial scale.

The actions you propose would work well to address lower return activities, such as marketing robocalls. They can not work to address high-return scams.

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

#218

Post by imglorp »

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.

I think the subtext is that given valid caller IDs, then block lists can be made. The US FTC might manage them like it does the do-not-call lists, or the perhaps the US Attorney's office, after some criminal complaints.

Ideally, the telco would implement these block lists, but also ideally, they could be traded around like web ad block lists for individuals to load on their phones.

I think we all know scam calls are a serious source of revenue for carriers, so they will need to be led to this conclusion by force.

None of that happy future would come without true caller id, thus the resistence from carriers to fixing spoofing.

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

#219

Post by jesuscript »

rockyj wrote: post #172
debarshri wrote: post #112

It is not just Americans who affected by these scams. It is also Indian elderly population too who are affected by these scams. I think Indian authorities are very slow to react to these issues because police dont really understand the impact these calls make. Also they are paid off and are often of part of the mafia that runs them. My parent's friends have also been scammed. The Netflix series "Jamtara" really shows…

Exactly. At one level, the Indian political system is a politician-criminal nexus. The politicians are supported by money flowing in from shady systems, the politicians allow shady systems to run and use the money to win elections. Rinse and repeat. Then there are some variations of these - e.g. the politician and criminal is the same person or in the same family, the criminal also does some legit work, the criminal…

They wouldn’t break the system because it’s one of the few systems that works in that country (I’m taking a amoral stance here).

Even the “good” systems don’t work, like water, electricity, or traffic/transportation. So whatever, I can see why they are okay with a “bad” but working system.

Nonetheless, it’s quite dysfunctional.

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

#220

Post by shockeychap »

My uncle almost drove two states away to give a stranger $10,000 because he was duped into believing his grandson had gotten into an accident and killed a pregnant woman. The only thing that stopped it was that he first needed to borrow the money, which led to my involvement. We made some calls and were quickly able to confirm that the grandson in question was at home and nowhere near the "accident" in question.

My parents have had to cancel their main debit card twice in the past year because they've given out the number to someone they thought was with their bank.

My neighbor (in her 80s) almost gave her SSN to somebody who claimed to be with Social Security.

I knew a guy who lost his entire retirement to scammers and had to give up his dream of retiring to Florida.

I'm sad to say it, but it's more dangerous than ever to be old or naive. In the old days, the scammers had to come to you. The internet has made it trivial to carry out scam operations from the other side of the world, and everyone who COULD do something (especially the FCC and telcos) seems to be indifferent and apathetic.

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