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Overseas Crooks Abuse TTY Phone Service
Rick Zeman writes "The Arizona Daily Star is reporting on how 419 scammers and credit card thieves are abusing the US' TTY service which enables hearing-impaired citizens to make phone calls with the help of an intermediary operator. 'The callers try to use stolen credit-card numbers to make big purchases of merchandise from American companies. The operators often suspect fraud, but they can't just hang up. Federal rules require them to make the calls and keep the contents strictly confidential.' Yes, Virginia, they have no shame...."
Let's describe the job of a Relay Operator:
No matter what the phone call, or what the content of that phone call is, the Relay Operator must, by law continue the conversation.
When a deaf person is feeling lonely they might decide to call a phone entertainment line, man or woman, having to type this in, and say what the deaf person types.
Like the job of a relay operator isn't bad enough, now the operators have to deal with Nigerian poor grammer while perpetrating fraud.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Anyone else know about the "free matter for the blind" scam?
I read about it several (over 15) years ago in some magazine. Basically when mailing a letter instead of a stamp you just write free matter for the blind.
I think I may have tried it once back then to send myself a letter just to see if it worked. Can't remember if it did though.
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eeww, I'll have a crab juice.
Someone supposedly calling from "Royal Oil" in Nigeria wanted to order 200 40GB hard drives, by credit card. We told them we only ship overseas if payment is made by wire transfer. Another hint was that it's unlikely an oil company would resort to using a yahoo email address (royaliol@). They called back several times, but we obviously wouldn't budge.
/possibly/ legitimate caller by hanging up, but the translation process takes a while... especially when they're probably on several calls and don't get back to the terminal by the time it's their turn to talk.
The most annoying part was the amount of time it took to complete the calls. I can't be rude to a
I'm hearing. My boyfriend is deaf. I can pick up any voice phone, call the relay service, and use it to call my boyfriend. The CA types what I say, and reads to me what my boyfriend types back.
How would you put a password protection on this? Would every hearing person have to register a spoken password to be able to call a deaf person?
The point of the relay service is to allow deaf and hearing people equal access to the phone system. If I need a password to call a deaf person but not a hearing person, that's hardly equal access.
Deaf people would never stand for such unequal treatment. They would be even more insulted if you said that they can't take care of themselves by screening their own scammers as hearing people do.
If the operator is, by law, required to facilitate the conversation, what happens if it is blatantly illegal, such as a terrorist plot, or a deal for kiddy porn or drugs? the operator is required to keep the conversation confidentail? It is not like there can't be deaf criminals. And besides, if these people are not even deaf, what is to say that the same thing can not be done by criminals or terrorists?
is the opperator still required to facilitate the conversation and keep quiet? isn't that then like, being an accessory to the crime, maybe even conspiricy? If they call the police, then is that evidence or witness testimony inadmissible for breaking the confidentiality of the service?
i don't think that would hold up under scrutiny. the deaf person can still come into the store and buy a computer.
As a student loan company, we get an enormous number of these calls every week. Every time we have a new hire, we have to take at least half a day of training to educate them on the various ways that overseas scammers will attempt to take advantage of phone reps. The TTY server, and AT&T's Internet Relay service, are badly abused. It's to the point now where we are considering a voice message to direct the rare legitimate TTY-necessary customer to either email or fax options - at least with those options, we can blacklist originating exchanges (outside the US) or on spam lists.
It's really sad, but there will always be those whose work ethic embodies the tragedy of the commons to the fullest.
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I'm hearing-impaired. I have to use closed captioning to watch TV. Closed captioning is required of broadcasters/cable channels by law. It's only fair, since some of my tax money supports the television system. If I have to pay something, I should be able to use it. Similarly, many programs broadcast audio descriptions on a second audio track for the blind. Both can be turned off if they aren't desired.
If we have to pay for it (the phone system in the US is partly paid for by taxes), we should be able to use it somehow.
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They will handle it, however they way that handle it is by forcing the merchant to give the money back to the person who's stolen card was used. Now the merchant is out moeny for falling for the scam (which is bad but partly their fault) and the deaf people still have long lines and a difficult time using services that are almost vital to them doing things you and I take for granted.
First of all we are not supposed to process International calls. If the CA determines the user is from outside the US there is a phrase that is typed. The problem is trying to convince a supervisor that 80.179 is Israel. They barely know what an IP address is let alone the use of whois to determine the ownership of a block of IP's.
The problem is they can't! The FCC has everything all fucked up.
Iddiot CC merchants deserve what they get.
Quite frankly, I don't see much of a problem with the TTY service. There are plenty of other opportunities for said scammers to fraudulently buy products with someone else's financial information. The operators are doing their duty just as they should; being a truly anonymous & non-interacting relay.
Logging conversations for later access would be an immense privacy violation, putting the TTY-using deaf/dumb population at yet another disadvantage. A lot of it wouldn't even be useful with the only traceable information being the IP address of the Internet connection (unless some reference was made in the call... which could easily be fabricated).
It does seem logical to verify that the users of this system are deaf/dumb & are in need of this service. But this would add a whole new layer of nessesary infrastructure to the TTY system. I can think of no foolproof test {online or in person} for the lack of speech or hearing, which can both be faked without too much effort. Even if we were able to obtain such information perfectly, it is unlikely that much useful could be done with it. A government listing of hearing impaired persons & unique ID numbers? With this time of nationwide government database integration & information mining, it would be wise to consider the effects of yet another well-seeming database & its effects in strenghtening the informational power of the feds over the populace. Consider this too: the assignment of "hearing impared" authorization #s or IDs will not significantly hinder criminals who already make a business of illegally obtaining similar uniquely-identifying, supposedly confidential, information.
The responsibility rests on both ends of the transaction. The middleman simply does not have the resources to effectively intervene, nor the responsibility for what is being anonymously forwarded.