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TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

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Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#41

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

KoolKat23 wrote: post #4
hinata08 wrote: post #2

Remember when global surveillance used to be a meme among conspiracy theorists ? Pepperidge Farm remembers What can we say about a corporation doing a trust score for half of the connected population in the world ? I wonder about their ego, or what went wrong in their management.

Would this be a breach of GDPR for us EU residents? I'm getting seriously disillusioned with all this surveillance stuff. At first I thought, you know, these were isolated incidents falling through the cracks, but in truth it's become pervasive and global. The scariest aspect is how individual actors have the ability these days to gather, interpret and isolate individuals from massive datasets, anonymising the data s…

For that matter, doesn't California have similar privacy laws?

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#42

Post by peanut-walrus »

Please someone blow the lid off the telco fraud world already. The reason companies such as telesign exist is because telcos are allowing fraudsters and scammers to run amok using their infrastructure and in lots of cases directly benefiting from their activities or even participating themselves. The whole telephone system is broken and the ones running the show are not showing any intent to fix it.

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#43

Post by foo-bar-bat »

rsync wrote: post #35
lxe wrote: post #25

Is there any legal way to obtain your own data from these companies? Does the US have any law that compels them to provide my own data they have on me and any derivative scores they calculate from it?

"Is there any legal way to obtain your own data from these companies?" Of course there is: sign up and use their API. For many years I had the "Ekata Reverse Phone" API enabled in my Twilio account which allowed me, for 8 cents or something, to query a phone number and see subscriber history, "related subscribers", address history, etc. Kind of a neat party trick. It also allowed me to verify and re-verify that the f…

Thanks for posting this here. Does does like neat party trick.

I got randomly assigned a "troubled" phone number once. It was a PITA. It should probably be illegal for phone companies to recycle numbers from old users with certain types of legal or financial problems, to innocent random new users who are literally paying for the privilege of inheriting a hot mess.

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#44

Post by slt2021 »

tpxl wrote: post #36
velavar wrote: post #30

I work in fraud prevention with vendors such as this. Let me be the devil's advocate here: trust and risk scores such as these are often very useful for identifying account takeovers and stolen identities in the financial and telecom worlds. We often see folks on HN complaining about how banks don't protect them from fraud losses - companies like this are how there is any hope left for some modicum of consumer protec…

> They're already doing something (invisible as it may be). They can definitely do a better job. But without companies such as Telesign, fraud losses would far, far worse. Until banks accept that they got defrauded, not you, whatever they do will be too little.

No-one is actually breaking into a bank and stealing $$ from your account.

Virtually most of the fraud is happening due to customer's own fault, not strictly bank's fault:

1. installed malware and got all saved CC data stolen

2. website you ordered your widgets got hacked and your CC stolen

3. clicked phish linked and lost your online bank credentials

4. got scammed and sent zelle to a scammer

5. used shady website to order deeply discounted electronics / signed up for adult membership website - and gave your CC data right into hands of fraudsters

6. used shady third party ATM in tourist place like Cancun and got your card skimmed etc

7. used same user/pass credentials for online banking, as your email account, and your online bank got taken over

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#45

Post by WeylandYutani »

tpxl wrote: post #36
velavar wrote: post #30

I work in fraud prevention with vendors such as this. Let me be the devil's advocate here: trust and risk scores such as these are often very useful for identifying account takeovers and stolen identities in the financial and telecom worlds. We often see folks on HN complaining about how banks don't protect them from fraud losses - companies like this are how there is any hope left for some modicum of consumer protec…

> They're already doing something (invisible as it may be). They can definitely do a better job. But without companies such as Telesign, fraud losses would far, far worse. Until banks accept that they got defrauded, not you, whatever they do will be too little.

I have to input a 4 digit code to use my card. As I understand it this is practically unheard of in the US.

That's fraud prevention right there.

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#46

Post by velavar »

slt2021 wrote: post #44
tpxl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're already doing something (invisible as it may be). They can definitely do a better job. But without companies such as Telesign, fraud losses would far, far worse. Until banks accept that they got defrauded, not you, whatever they do will be too little.

No-one is actually breaking into a bank and stealing $$ from your account. Virtually most of the fraud is happening due to customer's own fault, not strictly bank's fault: 1. installed malware and got all saved CC data stolen 2. website you ordered your widgets got hacked and your CC stolen 3. clicked phish linked and lost your online bank credentials 4. got scammed and sent zelle to a scammer 5. used shady website t…

So true and something I see everyday on my job! it's no wonder then that financial companies have to resort to using data from companies like Telesign to view these red flags and attempt to detect fraud.

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#47

Post by foo-bar-bat »

hinata08 wrote: post #13
jaclaz wrote: post #9

Side note/doubt. By asking to have your data through a GDPR request you are effectively giving to the receiver of the request: 1) your full name 2) your phone number 3) your e-mail i.e. basically a confirmation that both the phone number and e-mail are good/active/attended and that they are yours (and that you "exist"), while the data they may already have likely is only the telephone number and the patterns of its u…

these are the (not so) digital equivalent to what appeared in phone book anyway. Then, your phone number and emails are in any of your resumes, business card, subscription forms, contact details for any web service... They're not exactly private information anyway And I'm sure anyone can call your phone number and listen to the message of the voicemail, in which most ppl say their name out loud anyway. Lastly, isn't…

Gross

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#48

Post by velavar »

Andrex wrote: post #32
velavar wrote: post #30

I work in fraud prevention with vendors such as this. Let me be the devil's advocate here: trust and risk scores such as these are often very useful for identifying account takeovers and stolen identities in the financial and telecom worlds. We often see folks on HN complaining about how banks don't protect them from fraud losses - companies like this are how there is any hope left for some modicum of consumer protec…

How confident are we Telesign will never ever be the victim of a data breach?

Ahh that's a great question - it's a very real risk. In my mind, most of the data these companies have is sourced from other companies so all that these vendors do is increase the surface area for the attack vectors. And the (probably naive) hope is that the attackers can't do much with data such as trust scores and the underlying factors.

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#49

Post by firefoxkekw »

slt2021 wrote: post #44
tpxl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're already doing something (invisible as it may be). They can definitely do a better job. But without companies such as Telesign, fraud losses would far, far worse. Until banks accept that they got defrauded, not you, whatever they do will be too little.

No-one is actually breaking into a bank and stealing $$ from your account. Virtually most of the fraud is happening due to customer's own fault, not strictly bank's fault: 1. installed malware and got all saved CC data stolen 2. website you ordered your widgets got hacked and your CC stolen 3. clicked phish linked and lost your online bank credentials 4. got scammed and sent zelle to a scammer 5. used shady website t…

8. Using android phones that haven't received any security updates in the last few years because the vendor stopped releasing updates a couple of years after the release.

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#50

Post by glitcher »

slt2021 wrote: post #44
tpxl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're already doing something (invisible as it may be). They can definitely do a better job. But without companies such as Telesign, fraud losses would far, far worse. Until banks accept that they got defrauded, not you, whatever they do will be too little.

No-one is actually breaking into a bank and stealing $$ from your account. Virtually most of the fraud is happening due to customer's own fault, not strictly bank's fault: 1. installed malware and got all saved CC data stolen 2. website you ordered your widgets got hacked and your CC stolen 3. clicked phish linked and lost your online bank credentials 4. got scammed and sent zelle to a scammer 5. used shady website t…

Now go and explain to anyone's grandmother how this list of items is her fault. Hard disagree on victim blaming being the answer.

Sure all of us can learn to be more careful with tech, but the way banks frame fraud against them as identity theft against you is slimy doublespeak.

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