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A local taxi company near me was relisted on Google maps using a pay-per-minute redirect service. The scammers get paid, and the customer is non the wiser until
by lwhi 8y ago
A local taxi company near me was relisted on Google maps using a pay-per-minute redirect service. The scammers get paid, and the customer is non the wiser until they get their bill.
I was charged about £5 for a 30 second call.
- notimetorelax 8y agoWere you able to dispute this charge?
- lwhi 8y agoI told my phone company, they wouldn't refund. I also reported the number to the communications ombudsman .. haven't heard anything since unfortunately.
- wahnfrieden 8y agoWhat would be a legitimate use case for redirect services?
- hpbd 8y agoIf you own a business, you give your redirect, expensive number to clients you don't care much about so they don't call bitching about stuff (quality of whatever you sell, etc) and then you give your direct, free number to clients you don't want to lose.
- avip 8y agoOnce upon a time redirects were used as pricing mechanism for phone-based "apis". So you could call some weather forecast, or sports analysis, yada yada. I don't know if these still exist, it would not surprise me if redirects are used mainly for fraud nowadays (they are huge in voip call centres breaches).
- govg 8y agoBelieve Shazam also started as such a dial in service.
- ljf 8y agoIndeed - I bought some early Bluetooth headphones that have a 'shazam' button, and pressing it would Dail their 4 it 5 digit UK number at the time. I think it was something like 2580 (the numbers straight down the centre of the dial pad.) Calls were capped at 50p I think and you got an sms response with the song title and artist fairly swiftly. Strange how fast things change hey! Old news article about shazam and aqa https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/shazam-aqa-the-answer-is-on-your-mobile/ https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/shazam-aqa-the-answer-is-on-you...
- reaperducer 8y agoWhen they were big in the U.S. (976-xxxx days, before they moved to 900-xxx-xxxx), they were mostly astrologers, fortune tellers, and phone sex lines. The only one I've seen in a very long time was for a psychic reading over the phone. "I predict... you will lose a modest amount of money...."
- lwhi 8y agoThis company described the service as 'revenue sharing' .. http://www.callagenix.com/numbers/090x-premium-rate-numbers http://www.callagenix.com/numbers/090x-premium-rate-numbers
- brianbreslin 8y agoI didn't know they even had pay-per-minute services anymore. Does Twilio allow someone to set one up?
- tommyanthony 8y agoHi, I work on maps spam. I was wondering if you could dig up a link to the maps business, and include a rough idea of when this occurred. Thanks!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- edent 8y agoI've tried to report this map spam before - details at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/04/hundreds-of-thousands-of-spam-listings-on-google-my-maps/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/04/hundreds-of-thousands-of-sp... Happy to be contacted if you'd like more information.
- jpatokal 8y agoYour blog post appears to be conflating Google Maps with MyMaps. MyMaps lets people create & publish their own maps with random POIs: for example, here's a map of nice wineries around Melbourne. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mtgpe7JU9OtHUUdvG_A6Uq0eTpQ&usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mtgpe7JU9OtHUUdvG_A6Uq0eTp... However, these do not show up in the "main" Google Maps, and adding spam to them isn't any more effective than adding spam to a random website. Disclaimer: I used to work at Google Maps.
- edent 8y agoI mean, the url for these spam entries starts "Google.com/maps" so I think it is pretty reasonable to call this Google Maps spam. I don't remember how I found those specific ones, but using Google Maps for Android finds some pretty similar entries. Perhaps you could pass that on to your old team?
- Symbiote 8y agoThe UK phone number plan allocates the prefix 09… (or +44 9…) to premium rate numbers[1]. A change to an 09 number should be a red flag for the edit — I'd expect very, very few businesses to use a premium rate number as their main contact number. In fact, it seems many categories of business are banned from using them [2]. Some other European countries have similar prefix-based number allocation systems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_the_Unite... [2] http://www.fairtelecoms.org.uk/service-numbers-084-087-09-and-118.html http://www.fairtelecoms.org.uk/service-numbers-084-087-09-an...
- MagicPropmaker 8y agoThat is amazing! IIRC in the U.S. there's a few second "grace period" where there's supposed to be an announcement that says "this call is $2 a minute" where you can hang up immediately and not get charged. I presume that's not how it works where you are!
- lwhi 8y agoIt unfortunately isn't!
- x0054 8y agoI thought those were restricted to specific area codes. I think the phone company should be liable in scams like this. Also, there should be a way to block all pay-per-min calls on your phone. This is one of those areas government needs to regulate.
- Symbiote 8y agoAll premium rate numbers in the UK begin 09. (0870 is "national rate", which can be more expensive than it ought to be, but not to the level available on 09 numbers.)
- tonylemesmer 8y agoYep, years ago, we needed to call the NHS (out of hours doctor) and looked it up on Google, first result (sponsored) turned out to be a premium rate pay per minute redirect number. That turned out to be a £90, 30 minute call when we got our bill. I believe this practice is now harder to do or not possible.
- mnw21cam 8y agoIs it so hard to remember the number "111"?
- tonylemesmer 8y agoIt wasn’t 111 years ago when we needed it.