More on Scammers Abusing TTY Services 192
edward ericson writes "A more comprehensive look at IP Relay scams and their effect on relay operators, the deaf, US business and the relay providers like Sprint, AT&T and MCI. Unlike a previous piece in the AZ Star, this one shows that the problem is at least a year old, and estimates that the companies have earned at least $23 million by facilitating scams. Anyone here care to discuss IP blocking techniques?" See our previous story for more.
Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:4, Interesting)
The deaf people with computers can still get to this service by using their modems as a TTY terminal, and by calling a 1-800 number, there would be effective proof that the call is coming through the USA. Data calls don't get along well with VoIP services...
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
from here [ddtp.org],
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay. We should also suspend email, then, right? Because it is implmented very poorly, there is no system of authentication, and it is subject to MASSIVE abuse?
Oh, wait. You want to suspend other people's means of communication, but not your own. My bad.
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
TTY translation service existed just fine before IP connections were accepted, so it'll be just fine after. I'm not cutting off the old way, just cutting off the new way so that the old way can continue to operate without the public distrusting it...
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
Doesn't work. My wife and I have been doing this sort of thing in various forms for years. You would not believe the number of problems we've had due to dropped messages, late deliveries, etc. Voice channels are designed for high QOS. Text channels are not. For important calls we always revert to a relay variant.
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you missed a teensy little point: the IP relay service is funded by TAX DOLLARS and MANDATORY FEES on all phone bills. The big telcos are making profit at our expense -- they get paid BY THE MINUTE handling phone calls for scammers.
Can you hear me now?
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
Stop and consider how much the internet has been and still is funded by your tax dollars. Also think about how much telcos are making from this commitment. Now think about the quantity of internet-enabled fraud.
Can you hear me now?
No.
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Dir you read the article? Legit deaf people can't order things via TTY anymore because store owners won't accept the calls. That's a broken service for sure...
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
Without being rude, why is it unreasonable to expect a deaf person to buy a TTY terminal (phone) or a modem?
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
It's dying anyway (Score:2, Interesting)
At least that what my parents and their friends are doing.
Re:It's dying anyway (Score:2)
Not only that, but try faxing Walmart and asking for their hours, see how fast you get a reply.
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
Where's you get that idea from? Certianly not practical experience. I use my Vonage line to connect to out-of-band modemns on routers on a routine basis. In Europe, I never have problems connecting at anything less than 14.4k. In the US, I often successfully connect at 28.8 and up. 9600 baud has never been a problem, and is plenty fast for the purposes of this article.
As a deaf person myself. (Score:2)
Not really sure how an authentication system work. One way I guess, would to have the users actually mail in documentation certifying that they are indeed deaf.
Modems though. No. God no.
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2, Informative)
It works the other way around. Most TTY's can emulate modems. The native speed for TTY's is 45 bits per second. No real computer modem can go this slow - most have 300 bits per second as their lower limit. But many TTY's have built in ASCII modems that operate at 300 bits per second. What the parent poster is saying is that you can use your computer modem to connect to the relay service using this ASCII mode (300 bits per second).
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
They probably already own TTY hardware, so the point is moot.
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
Re:Kill the broken service, it's not needed. (Score:2)
Those scammers... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Parent should be (+1, teh funnae!) (Score:2)
have you considered that some of the set "deaf people" might overlap with the set "assholes"?
Obviously -- even if this were not the case before, it would certainly be the case after the proposal was implemented.
Learn something new every day. (Score:5, Informative)
I would not want to be in the position of the CAs that have to put up with this. According to TFA, not only can they not legally refuse to process these calls, in most cases (no international calls), but they are also prohibited from breaking the privacy barrier. That's not something I ever considered, but it's good to know your translator is not allowed to tell the world that you just bought Viagra over the phone.
On that note, they have to translate prank calls and phone sex. Jesus.
Re:Learn something new every day. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Learn something new every day. (Score:5, Interesting)
Alternatively, CAs are allowed to deliver a short instruction about the service. One could easily imagine a modification: "Have you ever used the relay before?
Re:Learn something new every day. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Learn something new every day. (Score:4, Informative)
Relay operators, and the telephone companies that they are contracted through, are NOT ALLOWED to imply ANYTHING about ANY of the calls. They can't even acknowledge that prank calls DO happen, much less that fraud calls happen.
I worked as a relay operator for 9 months. It wasn't that terrible of a job, for the most part. I have made some previous posts on it in the last story, if you search for those.
In the greetings, we weren't even allowed to say that the person calling was deaf or hard-of-hearing, since anybody can use a TTY and we couldn't make any assumptions at all. Instead we said the system was commonly used by people who were deaf or hard-of-hearing. Saying the system is sometimes used for fraud would be COMPLETELY crossing the line, however.
Please... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Please... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously... a "data embargo" against Nigeria may very well be deserved at this point. They've clearly got a problem enforcing their own anti-scam laws.
They should be busting these scam rings up, or admitting that they can't and seeking help in doing so. The fact that this isn't happening is very deserving... why do we want them as a data trade partner?
Re:Please... (Score:4, Interesting)
And keep in mind, it's not only nigerians that are doing the scamming. Now that this method is being widely published, it'll definitely spread like wildfire until something definite is done about the problem. Don't forget that it wasn't too long ago that credit card fraud through little online shops was rampant (and many "pandits" were crying the online shopping world would crumble), but things changed. People learn especially quickly when they are losing money that they need to be wary of fradulent occurences.
Perhaps what's most needed is an embargo on dimwitted idiots. Then we won't have to worry about people getting so easily scammed. Perhaps that even goes for the laws relating to the governance of the TTY service. It's a shame it's come to this.
Re:Please... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like how WTO punishments can often be handed out to unrelated industries... the point is just to get the violation to stop.
Re:Please... (Score:2)
Nigeria isn't the main problem (Score:2)
I think you're forgetting one big point here: the 419 scammers mostly don't scam from Nigeria. Instead, they are active in a lot other countries, with The Netherlands being at the top of the list. So, forcing Nigeria to follow the 419'ers all the way to Hell isn't going to stop this.
Re:Please... (Score:2)
Re:Please... (Score:2)
I've actually been thinking about this dilemma for a while and am drafting an RFC on the subject (it's not currently published, it will be a little while. Working on it in my spare time.)
The bottom line is: Unless they find some host to *proxy or NAT* all their connections, for the *entire country* it doesn't matter if they have the peering. If the backbone core routers of the
This happened to me once... (Score:5, Funny)
I told the scammer in question to quit abusing her TTY services or I would beat the living hell out of him, and he did. Got right up and walked out of the bar after dropping a $20 for the drinks he'd bought. I recommended to my gf that she consider re-evaluating how her protocols broadcast the availability of her TTYs on public networks, and suggested she wear a turtleneck next time we went out. It hasn't been a problem since.
Sometimes you need to know the right techniques to apply.
Re:This happened to me once... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This happened to me once... (Score:2)
At the same time you need to maintain your own
Re:This happened to me once... (Score:2)
What, you're suggesting he avoid locking into a long term contract? Most of the service providers these days on insisting on them...
Re:This happened to me once... (Score:2)
Until you have a certificate from the government saying you are locked in a contract, you are not. Most service providers will try to intimidate you into believing that a verbal agreement is a binding long-term contract but you should know that they will not hesistate to dump you and move on to other clients unless you have a signed, written agreement to bequeath an arm, a l
Re:This happened to me once... (Score:2)
I have personal experience with this stuff... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I have personal experience with this stuff... (Score:2)
Nobody's ever gotten rich off of claiming tax deductions. They've just prevented themselves from becoming needlessly poor by paying too much taxes. If your deductions outnumber your profits... you don't pay taxes, but you're also losing money as a business.
Re:I have personal experience with this stuff... (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps you should explain this to Microsoft, GM, GE, and others [ctj.org]...
Re:I have personal experience with this stuff... (Score:2)
A deduction isn't a direct handout... it's just the government leting you subtract money you "didn't really make" from your revenues for good reasons. The other subsidies and tax credits, however, are just plain direct handouts.
Re:I have personal experience with this stuff... (Score:2)
I think you hit the nail on the head here. The fact that the government foots the bill for these calls is probably a disincentive for the Relay Centers to do anything about this, and probably why they will take disciplinary action against employees who think for themselves and refuse to handle obvious scams. A classic case of corporate greed. What it needs is for a fraud victim to sue a Relay Center for being an access
Corporate greed? Try government theft. (Score:2)
So I'm paying taxes on my landline and my cell phone to run call centers where 80% of the volume is Nigerian scammers. And so are you.
Repeal the taxes and let the deaf people pay to access the IP call center. Or, if that's too free-market for you, then repeal *half* the taxes and let the deaf pay for *half* the service. Also add some authentication so that nobody c
Re:Corporate greed? Try government theft. (Score:2)
The Nigerian Scammers wouldn't be able to show that they were genuinely disabled, so they would end up paying lots of money on their phone bills.
No authentication leads to abuse (Score:2, Insightful)
No government in the USA hands out handcapped parking permits to everyone who asks. There's a documentation process to certify that one is entitled to it. Sure, that process sometimes gets fooled into giving a permit to somebody not entitled to it, but as least there's a paper trail created by such a fraud
Re:No authentication leads to abuse (Score:2, Informative)
Original post. [slashdot.org]
Re:No authentication leads to abuse (Score:2)
For those that don't understand her (I assume Liselle is a her?), the point is that this is the second Slashdot article on this topic, and the AC simply copied verbatim a highly-modded post from the first one.
Re:No authentication leads to abuse (Score:2, Insightful)
This one doesn't make sense to me. Do the people who issue handicapped parking permits keep a list of the places people park? These conversations are often intensely personal; it's literally the only way some of these people can use a telephone. I agree completely with authentication, but keeping records seems intrusive and demeaning. And if they are kept, sooner or later the deaf will start getting "targeted" TTY advertisements...
"You recently mentioned to your mother
Trolls have no shame... (Score:2)
Re:Trolls have no shame... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. I don't have the money to go filing pointless lawsuits that I doubt I'd see anything from... but maybe it'd be cool to just force Slashdot to cough up the IP address of the "anonymous" troll.
Art thou's commentes no longer valid?
They sure are still vaild. I don't disagree with myself very often.
Re:No authentication leads to abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot blows up whenever there is a minor privacy issue but if it concerns deaf people, oh screw them. Keep logs of all their conversation and to hell with their privacy.
Government does not hand out handicapped permits to everyone who asks... but neither do they record the actual usage (location, time, etc) of those permits.
If you really want think text logs of conversations are ok then you are perfectly fine with the government also transcribing hearing people's phone conversations. After all, we want to make sure you are not planning terrorist attacks using your cell phone.
Re:No authentication leads to abuse (Score:2)
Re:No authentication leads to abuse (Score:3, Insightful)
So why don't the vendors who have received these fraudulent calls complain to the phone company?
Get them tied up dealing with the complaints, explaining why they are unable to ID the caller, and they'll start losing money instead of earning it from the scams.
Then they'll lobby for some protection to be put in place.
Ease Up on the Spammers (Score:2, Funny)
They're deaf, not dead [] ) --laforge smiley
pranks via TTY (Score:2, Interesting)
1. making the TTY operator saying funny things("PLA go away")
2. Prank calling your friends across the USA via 800 numbers
3. Don't have a voice changer? use the TTY relay operator's voice!
RedBoxChiliPepper and friensds have been doing fun TTY for years!
Re:pranks via TTY (Score:4, Informative)
Why do I think... (Score:2)
Nigerian scams are but one annoyance CAs encounter on the job. They also facilitate phone sex and, frequently, endure prank calls in which college students and others call their friends--or even themselves--just for fun.
Obligatory Simpsons reference: Moe: Is there a Symore Butts in the bar?... Hey, alright I am going to strangle you next time you do this kid...
Mental images (Score:4, Funny)
Why don't they block IP's? (Score:3, Insightful)
While the addresses are not tied to geography, generally speaking you can tell which IP's are from inside the US and which are from outside. This is supposed to be a system used by deaf Americans, right? Just block all foreign IP addresses. It won't stop all of the false calls, but it will stop a lot of them.
That seems the only solution, unless you come up with some kind of authentication.
Of course, as the article states, the phone companies don't really have an incentive to stop the calls since they are paid either way. This may be one time that legislation is required.
Re:Why don't they block IP's? (Score:2)
Oh, and what about deaf Americans on holiday? No love for them?
I was almost a victim of this scam (Score:4, Interesting)
The person on the other end wanted to order 40,000 of our EverLED LED flashlight bulbs. We only sold 1000 of these in all of last year. At $40 a pop, most people only want to buy one. So right away warning bells went off in my head. Some toolbag wants to buy $1,600,000 worth of product from a retailer he has no relationship with and he is doing it over TTY relay???
I figured I'd try to find out a little more about the individual. I asked him where he was from. "Nigeria." WHOOP WHOOP DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!! Needless to say I cut the conversation short.
It was a very difficult exchange, the Nigerian used broken english that neither myself nor the operator could really understand. It must have been very frustrating for the operator, I felt bad for her. The whole exchange took about an hour, it was extremely tedious. And it was a complete waste of my time. Thankfully that hour is ALL I lost.
The Nigerian tried to call me back TWICE both times using the TTY relay, of course I wasn't about to give him any more of my time. Selling $1.6 million worth of product via TTY relay is unconventional, but I don't discriminate against the disabled. I do NOT however do business with ANYBODY in or from Nigeria.
Re:I was almost a victim of this scam (Score:2)
Well done.
Re:I was almost a victim of this scam (Score:2)
Re:I was almost a victim of this scam (Score:2, Insightful)
Relay calls are inherently slower than direct calls - this is simply due to having a third party translator. But an hour??! Something else was going on - he was probably using some
I don't get the TTY thing (Score:2)
Re:I was almost a victim of this scam (Score:2)
Maybe you should discriminate against people who are obviously trying to defraud you, as opposed to an entire country of predominantly innocent people.
Re:I was almost a victim of this scam (Score:2)
2. Sell them on the Nigerian black market.
3. Profit
Look! No question marks. We have found a viable business model!
Re:I was almost a victim of this scam (Score:2)
What kind of credit card has a multi-million dollar credit limit?
Actually, I'm just guessing, but I bet they would have used one of those phony cashier's checks for a purchase that large. No credit card company would accept a $1.6 million charge without making a few phone calls to verify things first.
Dealing with scammers in a business environment (Score:5, Interesting)
I am currently employed by an online retailer. We've been dealing with this problem for at least TWO years. The basic scenario goes something like this: we receive an order placed online with an obscene total, next day shipping, a yahoo email addy, or a combination of other flags that tell us it's fraud. The credit card address verification always comes back "does not match" in these cases. Then we send them a polite email stating that we can't process their order any further until the address does match. Within minutes the call center receives a call from an IP relay operator. Occasionally, they don't identify themselves as IP operators. So we always ask "Is this an IP relay call?" So far, they've never denied it. (In the last two years we've documented ONE TTY call.) At this point we accept the call and then explain to the scammer that we can't accept IP relay calls and that they should send us an email. Shortly thereafter we get an email from a different yahoo account that reads like a 419 scam. It's fun.
Basically, the theory is that if someone is legitimately using the service, they're perfectly capable of sending email. The benefit is that we minimize the time spent dealing with scammers.
If anyone else has methods of dealing with this nonsense, I'd love to hear it.
Re:Dealing with scammers in a business environment (Score:2)
Ask what "GA" stands for (Go Ahead, used in TTY conversations).
Other good "deaf centric" questions are:
What city is Gallaudet [gallaudet.edu] located in?
Who was Helen Keller? (famous deaf and blind woman)
What was Alexander Graham Bell's job? (teacher of the deaf [agbell.org])
What does ASL stand for? (American Sign Language)
Re:Dealing with scammers in a business environment (Score:5, Interesting)
I work part-time for a mail/telephone/internet catalog company, & handling the orders that came in by mail (which still accounts for about 10-15% of total sales last Xmas season) was an eye-opener about fraud. However, most of the possible cases stick out like a sore thumb. Typical clues:
*The addresses for where the catalog was delivered, the address on the check, & where the person wants to ship the order don't match. Bonus clue when the address the catalog was delivered is thoroughly scribbled out, as if to hide where the catalog was originally sent.
*Potential customer pays with one of those starter checks you get when you open an account.
*Customer orders stuff that can be easily fenced: usually this means electronics, but jewelry falls into this catagory too. (My employer doensn't sell jewelry.)
*Addition skills a first-grader would be embarassed over. (I had one chucklehead who rounded up on all of the prices -- $19.00 became $20.00, $27.50 became $30.00 -- & added an extra $20 on top of that, apparently because he still didn't have a firm grasp on this form of higher mathematics. I passed it to someone to research, & only later realised what was going on.)
*Potential customer has got to have it overnight. (Sheesh, if you need it that soon, why didn't you give us a call & use a credit card?)
Since it's always possible that an honest, real customer can do some, many, or all of these things, any suspicious order was passed to a senior employee who'd compare the names on the order against our database of customers to see if they'd tried this before, & a list of known fraud artists (retailers share this information), & then call to verify funds. If it passed all of these tests, then the order would be entered into the system to be filled.
(One item that shocked the **** outta me was that a fair percentage of people had their Social Security Number printed on their checks. For the few who don't know, the SSN is the skeleton key to an US citizen's credit history.)
Most of these methods are detailed in the original article, but it's amazing that a small amount of skepticism will block a large number of the scams. Based on that, I'd say that if a veteran TTY operator thinks a call is fraud, they're probably right.
Geoff
We get these all the time (Score:5, Funny)
He had one the other day where the operator relayed that the person wanted to know what credit cards our company accepted. He told the operator to tell them that we only accepted certified checks or wire transfers, and then told the operator that the person was going to hang up when they got that message.
The operator relayed the message, and there was a pause. Then she said "I'm sorry sir, but it is my job to relay this message: 'Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.'"
Credit card companies' fraud handling is broken (Score:5, Interesting)
As an online merchant, we see online orders that are clearly fraudulent. But the credit card still goes through (we 'authorize' first which just deducts from your credit limit). We decide not to take the order; thus we don't do a 'capture' on the card that would deduct the money from the poor guy's credit card account. That way we avoid getting charge-backs that would ruin our merchant rating and that would cost us in the end anyway (if caught). But we do log that credit card # in our database. Sometimes SIX MONTHS LATER the fraudster will use that same credit card # on our site again and it is *still* being accepted by Visa/Mastercard!
This is a broken system. As a merchant, we have no way (that I know of) to warn Visa/MasterCard or the issuing bank or the card holder that the number is being used for fraud! (Besides just going ahead and charging the card, knowing its fraud.) Certainly not an automated way to do so in the same way that we connect to payment gateways. It's just not in Visa's/Mastercard's interest to put a system in place because at the end of the day, the merchant is liable.
I'm interested if anyone knows of a place where merchants can swap info about fraudulent cards or other fraud data.
--LP
Re:Credit card companies' fraud handling is broken (Score:2, Informative)
Call your merchant bank, give them the card number and tell them you want the phone number for the bank that issued the card.
Call the bank, ask for the security/fraud department. Talk to the sometimes unhelpful people and you'll make progress.
Re:Credit card companies' fraud handling is broken (Score:2)
Call your merchant bank, give them the card number and tell them you want the phone number for the bank that issued the card.
Call the bank, ask for the security/fraud department. Talk to the sometimes unhelpful people and you'll make progress.
Banks really should issue a bounty for those who report fraudlent cards in this way. Most merchants won't put that kind of effort into saving the rest of the world from fraud without having
Re:Credit card companies' fraud handling is broken (Score:2, Informative)
I would strongly discourage you from seeking a place where merchants can swap info about fraudulent cards. You as a merchant are not an authoritative body to make a decision whose personal credit card information is a source of fraud. Plus, I suspect that participating in such an exchange of information would not only present an ethical issue, but it it would also place you in immediate and direct violation of your merchant agreement.
Now let me ask you a question, since I always wanted to know and you see
forum (Score:2)
Having worked... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder. If people shit on the commons, can we go back and chase them off with a gun?
Re:Having worked... (Score:2)
Ohhhhhh, the irony. (Score:3, Funny)
Ip and Geography (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, the AT&T folks are technically clueless it seems. Deteriming which country an ip is from is reasonably possible given the fact that IP blocks and other tools (traceroute, rdns) exist. Either they don't know what they are doing or they are in it for the money. Remember we are not talking specific geography, but country level location.
http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/ for example.
Am I missing something. Does ni not have any IP blocks or providers or standard routes? When I ran a site it was pretty trivial to work out what country someone came from even if the block wasn't clear, have things changed?
Re:Ip and Geography (Score:2)
However... the law says they should only be getting paid for sessions that originate from the USA. I say the burden should be on the telcos to submit evidence that a user is a real person in the USA before they can claim their money. Since the IP isn't good enough to verify a location, you're gonna need to collect something else.
IP address vs. geographic locale (Score:2)
I'll plead ignorance -- I assume they're right in s
Impressive (Score:2)
Very impressive, City Paper.
Hehehe (Score:2)
Anyway, once we discovered the service, we found out it was a really fantastic way to crank call people. Heh.
This is an outrage! (Score:2, Funny)
Dear God! We can no longer trust our TTY services!
OK. I think I should be safe now.
Wow, Insightful... (Score:2, Insightful)
What's bugging me is reading this Clarke book, in particular the lack of information awareness of the FBI. It's small wonder that more of the clowns spamming and scamming aren't getting busted. It would seem a fairly minor effort to look these people up, gather some evidence and send an agent over to bust their chops (or pass the stuff along to local athorities.)
That I'm still getting piles of spam states very clearly that tracking and
Re:Wow, Insightful... (Score:2)
Hey, I thought we were against the Patriot Act here.
-BrentRe:FBI must be in on the scamming.. (Score:2)
About a half an hour later, the pizza was there and ready.
In Rochester, especially around RIT/NTID [ntid.edu], pizza places and the like have installed TTY's and trained their staff how to use them.