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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

#231

Post by briffle »

jacquesm wrote: post #105
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…

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.

I thought this was the whole point of STIR/SHAKEN protocol the FCC requires, but maybe there are still some providers that are exempted?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN

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

#232

Post by dxbydt »

Until last year, I was completely unaware of this problem. I made a stupid, stupid mistake - registered a .us TLD using “Google Domains” - within minutes of registration, the calls started. Some Indian voice offering website construction, ios app, android app, tech support, on & on…over 100 calls in a single week! Used call block but they kept coming. They switch numbers and send 1000s of text messages - neverending spam. I wrote to Google support and they pointed to the fineprint - cannot enable privacy on .us tld ! So the phone number will remain public. Calls kept coming. Over 1000 calls! Finally bit the bullet and changed my phone number. Will never ever buy anything from google domains. I sure hope the FTC goes after these spammers and the telcos who enable this sort of behavior.

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

#233

Post by Cheezewheel »

pnw wrote: post #227
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.

The Feds already started on this with STIR/SHAKEN protocol which has been mandated by the FCC for most carriers in recent years. However, just like email spam, stopping spoofed calls is harder in practice than in theory.

>However, just like email spam, stopping spoofed calls is harder in practice than in theory.

Is it really? Couldn't the carriers simply require a certificate to allow you to spoof a phone number?

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

#234

Post by jmartrican »

jacquesm wrote: post #173
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.

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…

Maybe some lawsuits are in order. There might be a case to be made that theft is occurring on these telco networks, and they should be held liable.

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

#235

Post by DiggyJohnson »

bbbbb5 wrote: post #216
jacquesm wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

If we can make it harder to run a scam call business by changing things on our end, and these changes do not impede non-fraudulent use, why not go for it?

I don’t see why you’re pushing so hard against this line of reasoning, I guess. You’re making it sound like a hopeless endeavor to even try, in a “don’t lock your doors because thieves will just use lock picks” kind of way.

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

#236

Post by happyopossum »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #190
silisili wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course that won’t really help. The vast majority of scams are “romance” scams. These are people who don’t have accents but good job prejudicing your father against a whole group of people while not actually protecting him from scams.

> The vast majority of scams are “romance” scams.

do you have any sort of citation for that?

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

#237

Post by jesuscript »

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…

That’s kind of sad that they won’t just fix it if they can. I over hear my elderly parents give each other tips like “don’t open that email, it’s fake” and things like that.

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

#238

Post by chakkepolja »

Xeoncross wrote: post #94

I like that the same page shows a video of an "illegal school" being torn down by the government. Is this a joke? Like, what kind of dastardly evil people are constructing schools without permits in a country desperate trying to feed and education the large population? Is the municipality head just upset they didn't get an under-the-table payment like usual?

Schools are a money making business like everything else. Illegal school means they didnt follow rules and regulations.

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

#239

Post by jacquesm »

mrsuprawsm wrote: post #147
Macha wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly most of my inbound calls in Ireland are scam calls. Not sure this is solved EU-wide, maybe just in your specific EU country? As far as I know the solution is to require more anti-spoofing techniques (e.g. SHAKEN/STIR) for caller ID and then cut off the carriers who don't provide that, plus the carrier providing the numbers enforcing stronger terms on their users.

I'm in NL, and it seems to be solved here. I'm not sure _how_ it was solved (or they avoided it becoming a problem in the first place), mind you.

A couple of items to our advantage: there are quite a few carriers here but only very few of those have physical infrastructure and those tend to have strong political connections. They are tied in with LE and AIVD at the operations level and have excellent security departments and a reputation to uphold. Then there is the willingness of the local authorities to put time into this, and publicize when they nab some of these scammers. And finally, NL is a small market with a weird little language that isn't spoken much outside of our borders. (South African doesn't count ;) ).

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

#240

Post by frontman1988 »

prhn wrote: post #224
frontman1988 wrote: post #213

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.

> Is it bad that I don't feel sorry for the Americans getting scammed yes

Have you been to India and seen the absolute squalour and poverty that exists? I guess the net happiness in the world increases everytime some poor indian scams an american. The american is momentarily pissed off and wiser about scams, while the Indian has got a lot of money that will improve his living standards considerably.
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