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

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

281–290 of 504 posts

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

#281

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…

So, I realize this is a big ask - but can you please write this up as a story and sent it to a major news outlet? My cynicism is already high, but I would not have suspected this of all things, that telcos would allow the elderly to be victimized to the tune of $10B to make a few pennies.

Also, fuck gift cards. Make them illegal

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

#282
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have you seen how elaborate schemes small players on sites like crimemarket.is engage in for their scams?

Wow that site was trippy. It’s easy to forget what the dark side of the web looks like

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

#283

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.

These scam call centers aren't owned by glorious socialist warriors, they're owned by comparatively wealthy individuals that pay their workers far less than the profit of their labor and often hold them under terrible working conditions. Also, yes feeling bad for old people losing their life savings is the correct position (america doesn't exactly accommodate for people without money).

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

#284
Can we change the link to the original sources?

> Romance-related frauds and ‘tech support’ pop ups, originating largely from illegal call centres and phishing gangs in India, have caused losses of more than USD 3 billion... in the last two years alone. [1]

> Daud said the FBI’s website for reporting internet crimes (ic3.gov) have registered about 8.5 lakh complaints in 2021 with estimated losses of $6.9 billion, and over 7.8 lakh complaints in the 11 months of 2022, accounting for $10.2 billion in losses. The biggest losses are on account of investment ($3 billion), business email compromise ($2.4 billion), personal data breach ($1.2 billion), romance ($1 billion) and tech support ($781 million). [1]

[1] "Illegal Desi Call Centres Behind 10 billion loss to Americans in 2022", Times of India, Dec 27, 2022: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/illegal-desi-call-...

[2] "Elder Fraud Report 2021", FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center https://www.ic3.gov/Home/EF https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2021_IC3ElderFrau...

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

#285
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Can you give a single example of similar fraud being successfully tackled? Plenty of such cases here locally. Your point about the language barrier is on the money though, I never really gave that much thought but the number of Dutch speakers in India is most likely so low and the market so small that it isn't worth a massive campaign to them. Especially not if there are millions of gullible people in markets that…

> Plenty of such cases here locally.

I'd be super curious to hear about any local success stories.

>As for forcing Indian authorities: I've seen up close how corrupt things are there and I have very little hope that that would be a viable avenue to resolution of this problem.

Then you're left with education. These scams are very profitable and can easily afford resistance from telcos and banks.

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

#286
A lot of comments here suggest the Indian government is complacent in these types of operations, but I don't really believe that's the case.

The Indian central government is a pretty small and unpowerful entity. Beyond securing the countries borders, and keeping the currency spinning, the government doesn't have the ability or power to do much more. They are not especially well funded (taxes are seen as especially unwelcome culturally) and staffed by tenured officials who cannot be fired and have no incentive to perform beyond the bare minimum. The relative unity and peace holding the country together is not the lousy government, but really more Indian culture sticking together.

Police are also seen as having some level of authority in the country, but realistically there's only 1 police for every 1,000 citizens (source: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/business/worldbusiness/03...) and the country is heavily heavily reliant on private security who are generally just villagers who are given a badge and rules to enforce.

Outside the big cities, government control is very limited. How else could the crop burning choking Delhi every winter continue?

So do these call centers operate with the blessing of the government? Probably not. Do they have to bribe police to operate? probably not. The government is probably unaware of scale of the problem, the police have their hands full taking care of their own people, and the American government wouldn't dare try a diplomatic solve as India's agreement with many foreign policy situations is mission critical.

Maybe it'd be better if in America we could try to get support off of the POTS and try to better connect to official brand sites or apps? Or we have phone plans/email plans for the elderly that don't allow stranger contact?

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

#287

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.

I understand the impulse to feel this way, but redistributing wealth through criminal syndicates who likely contribute very little real value to the Indian economy is not the way to go.

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

#288
post #232

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…

It's not Google's fault. This is the rule for .us domains. Blame the US government.

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

#289
post #232

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…

But that's not a Google Domains issue, it's a .us issue. All registrars cannot enable privacy on .us domains.

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

#290

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.

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

Only about a quarter of the 10k telcos covered by the FCC have adopted STIR/SHAKEN in the year since the deadline.

The FCC has started enforcement actions, in October they announced they are cutting off seven telcos who failed to comply. Only ~7000 more to go!

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