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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

#271

Post by api »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #67
phaedrus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just accept the collateral damage of never answering calls. Traditional telephone service is dead to anyone under 40.

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…

If it can be used to reach you and the cost of sending messages is low or zero, it will be destroyed by spam. I'm not sure anything can stop it, even serious dedicated police action and regulation.

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

#272

Post by loopdoend »

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.

Indeed, with the gift card system... how does $10 billion get laundered through gift cards like that?

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

#273

Post by heikkilevanto »

It is too easy to fake the originating number. The actual line number where the phone call comes from is probably in the protocol already. A lot could be solved if the phones started to display that as well. Even better, allow the users to block on both official and actual numbers. Could probably be done without involving the telcos, only a change in the handset software.

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

#274

Post by jeltz »

jacquesm wrote: post #223
jeltz wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Enough minor inconveniences and the barrier to entry will go up, this will favor the larger players but those you can then go after with other means. It's never going to be a one-stop solution. Ideally there would be a warning that a call does not originate locally, routing the call through a local representative would generate yet another signal that you might be able to close off, including the possibility to decla…

> If the will was really there I'm pretty sure this problem could be tackled.

Probably, but not with any of your proposed methods. I have talked with some SMS spammers and none of what you proposed would affect them. And for SMS spammers these inconveniences are a much bigger part of the cost of doing operations than for a company which needs to have employees in a call center. They have to spend a lot of money on buying new SIM cards as old ones get blocked.

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

#275

Post by silisili »

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.

It's right in the article, at the bottom, that romance scams only account for 1/10th of the total money taken in 2022.

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

#276

Post by wil421 »

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.

There’s a common scam on FaceBook Marketplace for sellers. They contact you and are interested in buying what you have. Once they have your phone number they send a google verification code and ask you to send it back to verify each other.

The goal is to setup a US google voice number to abuse later.

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

#277

Post by pnw »

Cheezewheel wrote: post #233
pnw wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, that's exactly what STIR/SHAKEN does - in theory. In practice, like most complex systems, mandating a change like this requires software and hardware upgrades and compatibility testing, all of which takes time. The FCC tracks >10k telcos and providers. Last time I checked, only a quarter of the companies had fully implemented STIR/SHAKEN since the deadline and the FCC has recently started enforcement action on telcos that have ignored it. There is some evidence it has reduced spoofed calls, but just like email, the scammers have also moved to adapt their techniques.

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-remove-companies-robocall-d...

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

#278

Post by api »

weakfortress wrote: post #50
ohCh6zos wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While maybe an act of war is too harsh, we should be hitting them hard economically.

The police in India are paid off to allow this. Indeed, the best solution would be economic sanctions on India until it is resolved.

How many people in India have lost money to crypto scams based in the US or US-aligned places? The US has sports arenas named after crypto Ponzi schemes.

This is a global problem. It boils down to the Internet and modern telco networks opening up cheap ways to address many millions of people, allowing scammers to troll for marks at scale. Gift cards, easy wire transfers, in-app purchases, easy card charges, and crypto have made it easy to get money from people with low friction too.

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

#280

Post by bjourne »

I've also had a run-in with "the Indian tech support". Weird thing is that when the guy on the other end realized I was running Linux and just messing with him, he became incredibly rude and cursed at me. Told me to "put fingers up my butt" and that I was a horrible person for wasting his time... Surreal almost.
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