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I remember when scamming in the late 90s was people setting up 'adult s3x lines' and the owners would get people to blue box the lines, I think people could mak
by ptek 3y ago
I remember when scamming in the late 90s was people setting up 'adult s3x lines' and the owners would get people to blue box the lines, I think people could make $30,000USD per line. People also used pbxs to ring the lines. People also used to sell international calls via hacked pbxs.
I read in the New Zealand press that most phone crime is unprotected pbxs, Now that the telphone infrastructure has become unbundled Telecom New Zealand doesn't care about international toll fraud if you are not using telecom, and they won't contact you if there is a sudden spike of international calls like they would when they had a monopoly upto the 90s.
I don't know why people would still fraudulenty call overseas because of fibre optic cables and high speed internet, the only reason I can think of is that they want it to be harder to trace the call. If you used a stolen card and rang a home country direct and got the operator to place the call, your voice is still being recorded so your still being busted.
I have a strong dislike for scammers, I worry about elderly and the vulnerable (my parents) but I don't know the conditions that led them to that place.
- bri3d 3y agoSMS / MVNO carry and international voice call / IRSF fraud is alive and well. Probably bigger than ever. Apps which use SMS 2FA and voice 2FA are highly vulnerable - scammers will create fake accounts and request recovery over and over, either to pump SMS into MVNOs they partner with, or pump voice calls through to international premium rate numbers they control. Since the whole thing is a legacy system built with little mind to hostile actors, most phone networks aren't well equipped to distinguish from these uses and legitimate use, even though it doesn't seem like it should be particularly hard. Unfortunately, one big-hammer solution is often to just ban countries outside of an application's target market from the auth flow, which isn't great from a sociopolitical standpoint.
- luxuryballs 3y agoto your final point I wonder what things I might be vulnerable to when I’m old, it seems hard to imagine right now
- silexia 3y ago"I have a strong dislike for scammers, I worry about elderly and the vulnerable (my parents) but I don't know the conditions that led them to that place." Greed.