4 ms·

The incoming number was reported as This will do you no good. They are using a hijacked PBX. There is no way possible they are going to make it that easy to

by e40 13y ago

The incoming number was reported as This will do you no good. They are using a hijacked PBX. There is no way possible they are going to make it that easy to find them. Here's my story: I kept getting calls from "credit card services" and every damn time I asked to be removed they would just hang up on me. So, after about the 20th time, I decided to play dumb. I strung them along for 10 minutes. Here's how I did that: the first person you talk with asks if you have more than $3000 in CC debt. The second person basically asks the same thing, but in a little more depth. The third guy is the smooth talker. He asks you to find your statement so he can verify information from it. I played dumb and said I needed to find it. He said "I'll wait" in a very patient voice. I kept him on the like for 10 minutes (while I worked). Then, I just hung up. He called back immediately and said we accidentally got disconnected. I told him "you wouldn't take me off your list, so fuck you." His revenge was next. The phone rang and someone was yelling at me. He was redirecting all complaints to my phone number. I had to unplug my phone. I called AT&T (who I had service with) and after about 30 minutes of run around, they said they couldn't do anything. I'd have to contact the fraud department, or some such. I did try, but it was a lot of paperwork and it looked very bureaucratic. So, I decided to google for "credit card services" (not exactly that, but that's what I started with). I found a TX state lawsuit against a company with this name from the early 2000's. The lawyer that prosecuted them was listed and had a phone number. So, I called it. An elderly gentleman picked up the phone and I told him my story. His first words, "so, they're back at it?" He told me to be very careful, and basically tried to dissuade me from doing anything. It amazed me that they seem to operate with impunity.

nostromo 13y ago
Phones need a "report spam" just like email. Phone companies or device manufacturers should use those reports to trace bad actors.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Note that email doesn't have a "report spam" functionality designed into it (in the form of RFCs), though email providers often offer their own version to their users (most are far more opaque when it comes to reporting spam against their own systems). Reasons for this are diverse, but effectively, if you're a large email service provider, your users' satisfaction is a concern, spam is a large part of that, and the ability to leverage reports from many users to identify spam (and non-spam) sources is very useful. Telephony was designed in a far more innocent age, and was largely protected against the abuse which ran rampant in email (and Usenet) on account of the costs associated with network access and in actually making calls. Now that this is rapidly approaching email costs (effectively nil at the margin once you've got the infrastructure set up), this is changing. One consequence is that voice service is rapidly becoming useless due to abuse. I've rightgraded from a smartphone to a dumbphone for a number of reasons, but one feature I particularly miss from my Android device was the call screening app: deny access to unknown or blocked numbers, and allow priority access only to specifically whitelisted callers. Why should I allow myself to be interrupted by any one of the 7 billion people on this planet, or worse, programmed robots which call me without any regard for what I'm doing? I'm hoping for features such as this to make it into dumb phones soon. My other thought is that conventional telephony (both POTS and mobile) is going the way of the dodo -- VOIP over wireless broadband with only very occasional fallback to direct connections.
  - Symmetry 13y ago
    I wonder if it would actually be legal for a phone company to implement a spam filtering service the way an email company can. Phones services are a much more regulated industry than email is.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Offering tools to put the subscriber in much greater control over their device would (and IMO should) be offered. My frustration is that at present, I cannot do what I want without, take your pick: • Using a dumbphone with at best the ability to block (but not whitelist) specific numbers. • Using a smartphone, with all of the additional privacy invasion concerns involved. • Utilizing a service such as Google Voice, in which all of my phone traffic is routed through yet another NSA surveillance partner (willing or otherwise is left unspecified). • Ditching conventional voice comms for an alternative (which I haven't yet even identified) that actually does offer the filtering tools I'd like. This would also have the effect of greatly limiting my general connectivity, though in the present universe this might not be all bad. My suspicion is that a high-end and/or technical solution which does this will emerge. As either option is selective to generally more attractive and upscale markets, the conventional telephone network (wired and cell) will die: it will be comprised increasingly of down-market subscribers, less attractive to both telcos and others who might be interested in reaching them, and cut off from the NeuPhone network (if it weren't that would itself be a disadvantage of the NeuPhone, though some bridges might in fact persist). It's a similar dynamic to how first AM, then FM radio have increasingly become wastelands as those with means switched first to cassette CD players, then iPhone adapters, as well as satellite and Internet radio. Or Facebook's overtaking of an established social networking market by offering a more attractive network (the in-crowd of Harvard, Ivies, Stanford, and selective colleges for the first few years of the network). Or of broadcast TV's increasing fall in light of both deferred-viewing options through DVRs and increasingly on-demand video content over the Internet -- why accept QVC when you can watch Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo, or even YouTube, bypassing schedules, advertising, and hours of crap?
crag 13y ago
"This will do you no good. They are using a hijacked PBX. There is no way possible they are going to make it that easy to find them." Yup. But more likely the caller is using SIP. Which is easy to manipulate to one needs. Quickly too. PBX's, when hacked (and they are hacked regularly), are being used to sell calls. And most PBX's rely on service from carriers. Carriers usually set the CID info (they'll set it to what you want - but it takes time). But with SIP it's a different story. I could call you sitting in Russia and you'd think I was down the street. And it gets worse too. Cause most carriers (ATT, Earthlink, Verizaon, Windstream, XO, etc, etc) got lazy and greedy and are now using SIP to host 800 service. And all the carriers are getting hacked DAILY. So reporting the number is a waste of time. If the carrier traced it (and they won't) they'd probably trace it back to their own service. So it's buyer beware really. I trust email more than phone calls. PS: I didn't mean to imply these guys are from Russia. They could be (a lot of shit has it's roots in that country - since its mob rule basically), but PLENTY of Americans are scamming too.
wpietri 13y ago
It could well be that those 20 calls were from different companies using the same identity. Or it could be a company feeding the calls to different criminals. The FTC keeps going after the people behind these things, but they are woefully outmatched: http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/11/ftc-leads-joint-law-enforcement-effort-against-companies http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/11/ftc-le...
- lesterbuck 13y ago
  The FTC held an all day summit on robocalls in 2012, and ran a contest to find the best proposal to handle the problem. The problem is hard to solve, and the winning proposal does not seem to be spreading much: http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/2012/10/robocalls-all-rage-ftc-summit http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/2012/10/roboc...

by e40 13y ago

nostromo 13y ago

Phones need a "report spam" just like email. Phone companies or device manufacturers should use those reports to trace bad actors.

dredmorbius 13y ago
Note that email doesn't have a "report spam" functionality designed into it (in the form of RFCs), though email providers often offer their own version to their users (most are far more opaque when it comes to reporting spam against their own systems). Reasons for this are diverse, but effectively, if you're a large email service provider, your users' satisfaction is a concern, spam is a large part of that, and the ability to leverage reports from many users to identify spam (and non-spam) sources is very useful. Telephony was designed in a far more innocent age, and was largely protected against the abuse which ran rampant in email (and Usenet) on account of the costs associated with network access and in actually making calls. Now that this is rapidly approaching email costs (effectively nil at the margin once you've got the infrastructure set up), this is changing. One consequence is that voice service is rapidly becoming useless due to abuse. I've rightgraded from a smartphone to a dumbphone for a number of reasons, but one feature I particularly miss from my Android device was the call screening app: deny access to unknown or blocked numbers, and allow priority access only to specifically whitelisted callers. Why should I allow myself to be interrupted by any one of the 7 billion people on this planet, or worse, programmed robots which call me without any regard for what I'm doing? I'm hoping for features such as this to make it into dumb phones soon. My other thought is that conventional telephony (both POTS and mobile) is going the way of the dodo -- VOIP over wireless broadband with only very occasional fallback to direct connections.
- Symmetry 13y ago
  I wonder if it would actually be legal for a phone company to implement a spam filtering service the way an email company can. Phones services are a much more regulated industry than email is.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Offering tools to put the subscriber in much greater control over their device would (and IMO should) be offered. My frustration is that at present, I cannot do what I want without, take your pick: • Using a dumbphone with at best the ability to block (but not whitelist) specific numbers. • Using a smartphone, with all of the additional privacy invasion concerns involved. • Utilizing a service such as Google Voice, in which all of my phone traffic is routed through yet another NSA surveillance partner (willing or otherwise is left unspecified). • Ditching conventional voice comms for an alternative (which I haven't yet even identified) that actually does offer the filtering tools I'd like. This would also have the effect of greatly limiting my general connectivity, though in the present universe this might not be all bad. My suspicion is that a high-end and/or technical solution which does this will emerge. As either option is selective to generally more attractive and upscale markets, the conventional telephone network (wired and cell) will die: it will be comprised increasingly of down-market subscribers, less attractive to both telcos and others who might be interested in reaching them, and cut off from the NeuPhone network (if it weren't that would itself be a disadvantage of the NeuPhone, though some bridges might in fact persist). It's a similar dynamic to how first AM, then FM radio have increasingly become wastelands as those with means switched first to cassette CD players, then iPhone adapters, as well as satellite and Internet radio. Or Facebook's overtaking of an established social networking market by offering a more attractive network (the in-crowd of Harvard, Ivies, Stanford, and selective colleges for the first few years of the network). Or of broadcast TV's increasing fall in light of both deferred-viewing options through DVRs and increasingly on-demand video content over the Internet -- why accept QVC when you can watch Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo, or even YouTube, bypassing schedules, advertising, and hours of crap?

crag 13y ago

"This will do you no good. They are using a hijacked PBX. There is no way possible they are going to make it that easy to find them." Yup. But more likely the caller is using SIP. Which is easy to manipulate to one needs. Quickly too. PBX's, when hacked (and they are hacked regularly), are being used to sell calls. And most PBX's rely on service from carriers. Carriers usually set the CID info (they'll set it to what you want - but it takes time). But with SIP it's a different story. I could call you sitting in Russia and you'd think I was down the street. And it gets worse too. Cause most carriers (ATT, Earthlink, Verizaon, Windstream, XO, etc, etc) got lazy and greedy and are now using SIP to host 800 service. And all the carriers are getting hacked DAILY. So reporting the number is a waste of time. If the carrier traced it (and they won't) they'd probably trace it back to their own service. So it's buyer beware really. I trust email more than phone calls. PS: I didn't mean to imply these guys are from Russia. They could be (a lot of shit has it's roots in that country - since its mob rule basically), but PLENTY of Americans are scamming too.

wpietri 13y ago

It could well be that those 20 calls were from different companies using the same identity. Or it could be a company feeding the calls to different criminals. The FTC keeps going after the people behind these things, but they are woefully outmatched: http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/11/ftc-leads-joint-law-enforcement-effort-against-companies http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/11/ftc-le...

lesterbuck 13y ago
The FTC held an all day summit on robocalls in 2012, and ran a contest to find the best proposal to handle the problem. The problem is hard to solve, and the winning proposal does not seem to be spreading much: http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/2012/10/robocalls-all-rage-ftc-summit http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/2012/10/roboc...