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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

#381

Post by alexb_ »

javajosh wrote: post #281
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…

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

"Make a way you can use money without being tracked by everybody illegal" is not a good thing

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

#382

Post by supertrope »

nostromo wrote: post #366
zackmorris wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a classic example of an unintended consequence of deregulation. Normally we could petition our elected officials and get something done about it. But lobbyists have come to so completely dominate our legislative process that whole industries have effectively coopted the government through regulatory capture. On top of that, they've hoodwinked half the population into thinking that regulation bad. At this poin…

Telcos are one of the most regulated industries in existence. And as I point out in my sibling comment, bad regulation is the reason this problem exists: because telcos are not legally able to block most spam calls. If not for this regulation, telcos would have solved spam callers long ago by blocking suspected sources of spam. (Instead, they do work-arounds like labeling them "scam likely.")

The FCC gave the green light to blocking spam in June 2019. https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2019/06/05/beating-back.... This resolved AT&T's concern/excuse that their legal obligation to connect all calls included spam.

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

#383

Post by shockeychap »

bbbbb5 wrote: post #368
shockeychap wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You might have telco experience, but you have no clue whatsoever about the economics of these scams. Please watch your tone and choice of words. That sentence is more focused on defaming the OP than addressing the merit of what they said. Furthermore, saying "it makes no difference to the scammers if they're paying 10c per minute or calling for free" shows an equally clear failure to understand the economics of the…

>Please watch your tone and choice of words. That sentence is more focused on defaming the OP than addressing the merit of what they said. It's not defaming the OP. I did address the merit of what they said. > If it takes 2,000 calls to find one victim, and you're paying 10 cents per call, you'll spend $200 per victim. Yes, but in reality it takes less than 10 calls to find one victim. > Will you make that much back,…

You're correct that some of the scams yield hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like I said, I knew someone to whom that happened. However, most scammers look for smaller payouts in quantity. Think of ransomware that make it look like your computer is full of viruses just so they can "sell" the uninstaller for a few hundred bucks. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of these incidents for every one incident involving a large $100K+ payout.

It makes sense, given that people are willing to act a lot more independently (without consulting others) when only a small amount is on the line, they often won't admit to these missteps out of embarrassment, AND, perhaps most importantly, it won't raise the ire of federal law enforcement enough to be concerned about things like extradition and prosecution.

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

#384

Post by dymk »

e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #200
dymk wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds an attack on the people of India for something a private company is doing. It's the responsibility of the Indian government to police what happens within its borders. The Indian government has turned blind eye to scammers in their country targeting the US, they're effectively endorsing it. Why should the US continue to do business with a country that leeches off of the US citizenry? Historically, the US…

I don't agree with the Russian sanctions, you're doing collective punishment on a population of people, many of whom presumably don't even support the war. It may be an effective strategy but that alone doesn't justify it

How do you punish and manipulate a government without punishing its people, either as a side effect or direct goal?

Even if you come up with some way to somehow target specifically how the government functions but entirely spare the citizens from externalities, the government will just hold its citizenry "hostage".

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

#385

Post by codezero »

grimgrin wrote: post #352
shockeychap wrote: post #220

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 p…

similar story for me a year ago. grandpa got a call that i was in jail for hitting a car and the driver was pregnant. lost her baby. they even had “me” talk to them briefly which really got em believing. he went to bank and mailed $9500 in cash, to what ultimately appeared to be an airbnb was v sad because he felt supreme humiliation over the matter.

Airbnb must be a hotbed for these sort of things. I had a friend in the 90s who would squat at unfinished or unoccupied homes while he ran fraud scams, renting an Airbnb seems much easier, since these scammers almost certainly rented it with a stolen identity.

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

#386

Post by dylan604 »

psnehanshu wrote: post #360
bbbbb5 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Maybe Americans should abandon English.

wasn't there a language created/designed specifically to be an international replacement, but was universally laughed at as a response?

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

#387

Post by bbbbb5 »

shockeychap wrote: post #383
bbbbb5 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Please watch your tone and choice of words. That sentence is more focused on defaming the OP than addressing the merit of what they said. It's not defaming the OP. I did address the merit of what they said. > If it takes 2,000 calls to find one victim, and you're paying 10 cents per call, you'll spend $200 per victim. Yes, but in reality it takes less than 10 calls to find one victim. > Will you make that much back,…

You're correct that some of the scams yield hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like I said, I knew someone to whom that happened. However, most scammers look for smaller payouts in quantity. Think of ransomware that make it look like your computer is full of viruses just so they can "sell" the uninstaller for a few hundred bucks. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of these incidents for every one incident involving…

> You're correct that some of the scams yield hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like I said, I knew someone to whom that happened. However, most scammers look for smaller payouts in quantity. Think of ransomware that make it look like your computer is full of viruses just so they can "sell" the uninstaller for a few hundred bucks.

Those are the exact scammers who will get you to install teamviewer/anydesk and use it to empty your bank account, with the $100 charge just working as a distraction. You can find videos showing how these scams work on youtube.

Of course lots of people won't have $100k or even $10k in their bank account, the scammers will just send those people out to buy gift cards or similar instead of wasting their drop accounts.

Even if only one in 1000 calls returns $100k, they're still averaging $100 per call.

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

#388

Post by bbbbb5 »

jacquesm wrote: post #353
jeltz wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bu…

SMS spammers could be tackled with a couple of regexps if the will was there. The fact that these scams still work is a sign to me that there simply is no will to tackle any of this at the telco level. They know exactly what is going on.

Lots of telcos are doing exactly this, doesn't really work very well. The spammers just switch to more generic messages you can't realistically filter out.

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

#389

Post by rootusrootus »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #324
rootusrootus wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banned by sctb on Oct 16, 2016 for political ranting.

Wouldn't being banned prevent them from posting? Or does it just insta-kill all their posts?

It just marks all of their posts dead. If you have showdead:on set then you can see them, and choose to vouch for individual posts if they add value to the conversation.

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

#390

Post by [deleted] »

vctrnk wrote: post #327
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> 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. Consumer ≠ business/commercial. A home oven (or toaster, fryer etc) isn't made for such use, a commercial one is. You should really spend the monies in commercial gear if you're gonna feed such hordes of people. Similar thing with SIM cards. Why would a normal person b…

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