FreeConferenceCall (dot) com has a version of this as their business model.
What do they do?
I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud
71–80 of 113 posts
Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud
#72I 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…
I created an account to reply to you. This happened to me as well! Literally the exact same thing. The dog, the man, the argument, everything. Thought I'd dialled the wrong number.
I used to buy phone cards to call home in Australia long before online calling was available. Wasted far too much money on it. I'm glad it's a thing of the past.
Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud
#73I 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…
A friend who is in the voip business said that the calling card companies can buy software to manage the billing. In the billing software itself is a tunable to determine how much fraudulent charges to add to each call.
For instance, when a call is made, add a certain number of seconds to the call amount at the end of a call.
So if you add 5 seconds to a call and are doing 6 second billing, then on average about 84% of customers will be charged an extra increment of time. Who keeps track of their calls to such an exact time? Nobody.
Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud
#74I 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…
How do you know it wasn't just a glitch in the Matrix?
Maybe it was space aliens.
Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud
#75I 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…
thanks for taking the time to type that story - great story.
Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a distinction without a difference for the purposes of the comment to which you replied.
Not really. As it has its own administration and ergo telecoms system. It makes as much sense as "the UK is part of the US"
Right, yeah, who could forget how the US has sovereignty over the UK? What a nonsensical comparison.
Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud
#77lol: "Global capitalism abhors a vacuum."
Why is that funny?
Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud
#78lol: "Global capitalism abhors a vacuum."
Shame that global capitalism doesn't abhor US dev salaries being double Aussie or European ones. :-[
Reason: place is still important to productivity. https://smile.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B...
Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud
#79I 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.
Similar and much more polished is the Jolly Roger Telephone Company: http://www.jollyrogertelco.com
Re: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled into International Phone Fraud
#80Sounds 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…
> Sounds like the solutions needs to be orders of magnitude larger fines than the amount that would be gained. With so many frauds and crimes, corporate death sentences should be available for extreme, large or persistent cases.
A forced end to fraudulent business' would work wonders for the economy (IANAE).