Overseas Crooks Abuse TTY Phone Service

Posted by michael on Friday April 9, 2004 @07:14AM from the there-are-no-words dept.

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...."

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Re:We've gotten this by requim · 2004-04-09 07:36 · Score: 0, Redundant

I'd say the comment by another posted about granting user accounts is a good idea... Tie it to your drivers license/ss#/federal ID #.. etc.

Only problem is coming up with a non-intrusive way of doing it.

Having grown up as a child of deaf parents I must admit to having excused myself from school a few times as a teenager while playing "deaf", but an outright ban against calls is ridiculous.