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I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

theatlantic.com

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Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

#61

Post by eric_h »

djsumdog wrote: post #51

The article mentions VoIP being the issue, but comments here show issues with calling cards as well. It's not VoIP, it's trusting your service provider, the destination service provider and everything in-between. If you dial via a calling card, everything goes through their proxy before being handed off. I've run into problems with services like Telegram not accepting my Google Voice number (my own real US number) an…

> It's not VoIP

I'm not convinced that this is the case - I'd imagine there are a number of calling cards that terminate a POTS line to a voip device in the US and then VOIP out for vastly cheaper international calling.

Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

#62

Post by bbcbasic »

ikeboy wrote: post #15

Sounds like the solutions needs to be orders of magnitude larger fines than the amount that would be gained. If each individual user is only losing $1-3, they won't or can't fight it, and the company also won't in many cases. If the minimum payout/fine for such a scam was, say, $100 per occurrence and that was written into all the contracts, there'd be enough incentive at every stage for companies to clean up their a…

The solution is the internet. No need for a telco for international calls.

Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

#63

Post by Jarwain »

a3n wrote: post #24
jasonkostempski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should that have really been your concern? If every company that processes cards has to be fraud detecting experts, then they CC system is totally broken.

As Harry Tuttle said, "We're all in it together." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlCPkmb6cuY Which is why it pisses me off when a company deploys insecure software or hardware, claiming that network security is the customer's responsibility. So my home network should be reasonably secure, so that it doesn't become part of a bot net. Which means that I have to, or should, become at least knowledgeable enough to know…

I heard a neat definition of responsibility the other day: "If it is to be, it's up to me"

Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

#64

Post by g00gler »

Guest98123 wrote: post #7

I have a related story. I was in North America, looking for an apartment in Australia. At the time I'd buy phone cards for long distance calls, and they'd always work fine. So, I used the phone card, and tried to call someone about an apartment that looked great. According to the advertisement, it was a woman that owned the apartment and she had an extra bedroom she was renting. I called, and a man answered. It went…

That's hilarious. I wonder if the scammers hired actors + set up a scene to make the recording.

Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

#65

Post by Humdeee »

ChristianBundy wrote: post #16
Guest98123 wrote: post #7

I have a related story. I was in North America, looking for an apartment in Australia. At the time I'd buy phone cards for long distance calls, and they'd always work fine. So, I used the phone card, and tried to call someone about an apartment that looked great. According to the advertisement, it was a woman that owned the apartment and she had an extra bedroom she was renting. I called, and a man answered. It went…

Have you heard of the "It's Lenny" bot? https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ It's meant to keep telemarketers on the phone and waste their time, but it sounds like someone was using something similar for international phone fraud.

Goldmine. I just listened to a call where Lenny put the telemarketer on hold for a 2nd time to quiet his ducks. It's amazing how getting telemarketers to repeat themselves for the fifth time to a bumbling old man really takes the optimism out of their voice.

Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

#66

Post by falsedan »

eric_h wrote: post #61
djsumdog wrote: post #51

The article mentions VoIP being the issue, but comments here show issues with calling cards as well. It's not VoIP, it's trusting your service provider, the destination service provider and everything in-between. If you dial via a calling card, everything goes through their proxy before being handed off. I've run into problems with services like Telegram not accepting my Google Voice number (my own real US number) an…

> It's not VoIP I'm not convinced that this is the case - I'd imagine there are a number of calling cards that terminate a POTS line to a voip device in the US and then VOIP out for vastly cheaper international calling.

I used to work for a company which wrote & sold telco switch management software. Mostly is was for automatically calculating the Least Cost Route, given a list of carrier price sheets and rates for prefix bands.

We had a few local clients with slightly complicated setups, so we got to implement some matching logic for Call Data Records. Their local end had three switches attached to external trunks (to other carriers) and trunked to each other, and a few digi-boxes which voiped to (say) Afghanistan (telcos always use Afghanistan for examples, since it's the first country in the price sheet).

They would list a cheap per-minute price to +93, accept incoming calls & terminate them at the digi-box (closing the CDR & generating a revenue event). The remote digi-box would then start a new outbound call (and CDR) from their partner's facility and (hopefully) get to a subscriber line without going through too many carriers.

The trick is (and we never asked or found out) is that most of the time the remote digi-box is actually a carousel of SIM cards with unlimited local calls. The carousel is used to automatically distribute the calls over the SIMs to impede fraud detection by the mobile carrier.

These setups are pretty common & are called grey routes.

Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

#67

Post by Maxious »

eric_h wrote: post #61
djsumdog wrote: post #51

The article mentions VoIP being the issue, but comments here show issues with calling cards as well. It's not VoIP, it's trusting your service provider, the destination service provider and everything in-between. If you dial via a calling card, everything goes through their proxy before being handed off. I've run into problems with services like Telegram not accepting my Google Voice number (my own real US number) an…

> It's not VoIP I'm not convinced that this is the case - I'd imagine there are a number of calling cards that terminate a POTS line to a voip device in the US and then VOIP out for vastly cheaper international calling.

A variation is to use a mobile number so subscribers of the same telco can use their free/unlimited minutes http://apcmag.com/optus_threatens_customers_over_voip_calls....

Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

#68

Post by CamperBob2 »

ChristianBundy wrote: post #16
Guest98123 wrote: post #7

I have a related story. I was in North America, looking for an apartment in Australia. At the time I'd buy phone cards for long distance calls, and they'd always work fine. So, I used the phone card, and tried to call someone about an apartment that looked great. According to the advertisement, it was a woman that owned the apartment and she had an extra bedroom she was renting. I called, and a man answered. It went…

Have you heard of the "It's Lenny" bot? https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ It's meant to keep telemarketers on the phone and waste their time, but it sounds like someone was using something similar for international phone fraud.

This makes me want to create an Eliza implementation that's optimized to waste as much telemarketing time as possible. All that would be needed is a phone that lets you write your own telephony application and use it to answer calls.

Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

#69

Post by dahdum »

tyingq wrote: post #29
jasonkostempski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should that have really been your concern? If every company that processes cards has to be fraud detecting experts, then they CC system is totally broken.

>If every company that processes cards has to be fraud detecting experts, then they CC system is totally broken. That is 100% the case, at least in the US, for card-not-present (online, phone, etc) transactions. The credit card companies have zero liability for fraud in those cases...the liability is 100% on the merchant seller. In fact, the CC companies collect a non-trivial chargeback fee, so they arguably profit f…

Many processors do have fraud checks that work quite well, and you can always use services like Amazon Payments which includes fraud protection.

Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud

#70

Post by tyingq »

dahdum wrote: post #69
tyingq wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If every company that processes cards has to be fraud detecting experts, then they CC system is totally broken. That is 100% the case, at least in the US, for card-not-present (online, phone, etc) transactions. The credit card companies have zero liability for fraud in those cases...the liability is 100% on the merchant seller. In fact, the CC companies collect a non-trivial chargeback fee, so they arguably profit f…

Many processors do have fraud checks that work quite well, and you can always use services like Amazon Payments which includes fraud protection.

Some do, but they are working with a much smaller subset of data than would be possible of the cc companies were to do it.

The quality of a real anti fraud solution, if it were to include all data, could be amazing.

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