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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...."
Anything that's totally given away for free meant to help a certain segment of society should at least seek proof that the person taking advantage of the service is a member of that segment of society.
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 that can be followed once it is discovered.
Free TTY services be allowed to issue usernames and passwords to their customers, keep text logs of the conversations, and able to revoke the access of those who abuse their accounts. Basically, the laws that are requiring them to be open are also regulating this service to its death. This needs to be fixed quick.
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.
How is this different from the same scammers calling people with the same pitch?
:)
I would be a lot more worried about the idea of an outside party filtering my incoming calls without any control from me.
More specifically, it is hard to have fun with phone salesmen or religious door-knockers once they learn to avoid you.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
At the computer shop I run we've literally recieved hundreds of these phone calls. The conversation typically goes like this (but relayed, so it takes forever)
Do you sell laptops?
No, we don't sell any laptops.
How about desktops?
Yes, we do desktops.
Will you ship overseas?
No, no overseas shipments.
Ok..ok...how about Los Angeles.
We can do that.
Ok, I have credit card, I can pay now.
We'd need some sort of verification that you are the cardholder.
The conversation goes downhill from there. The first few times we took it seriously, but since then we've refused to take relay calls. If we hear the operator say "This is a relay call" we interrupt and say "Sorry, we don't take relay calls" and then HANG UP. If you don't hang up, the operator will say "hold" while they type out the message and then wait for a response. Waste..of...goddamn...time. Slamming the reciever down helps. If there's any people who genuinely use the service...sorry, we just can't afford to spend hours wading through these phone calls to get to you.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
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.
---
eeww, I'll have a crab juice.
Can be found here:
A irline.mp3
http://phonelosers.org/sound.html
Specifcally this one which would probably get you a trip to camp X-ray today
Phone_Losers_of_America_0118_Deaf_Relay_Commuter_
keep text logs of the conversations
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 that you're thinking of moving. Contact Local Realtors Inc for a free consulation!", etc.
To say nothing of the legal implications; a warrentless wiretap on thousands of American phones, always running, in plain-text, east-to-search format.
419 scammers and credit card thieves are abusing the US' TTY service ?
Mh, I wonder how they counted that there were precisely 419 of them.
bool Marketoid::IsGood(){return IsDead();}
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
Last year I had to track down some carders operating from the US, who were trying to buy products here in Europe with stolen and/or generated credit card numbers. It makes sense to pull that stunt with people (read: jurisdiction) far from your own home...
You know how difficult (and expensive) it is to both track down the people and get a conviction? Laws are made on a national level, institutions such as police and justice departements are also pretty much bound to their specific country (unless you just act as if you own the world), hence international crime has little or no resistance. I mean, why would you care if the crime has been committed elsewhere?...
Same with spam, really. Most spam I receive comes from scumbags on US soil, and it's pretty hard to harm them from here. As opposed to local spammers: a friend of mine once made a real-life visit when he received a spam email from a company not far from where he lives. He didn't get any spam anymore from that company.
That might be a viable solution to the spam problem anyway: just a global team-up of people willing to visit spammers living close to their own home. I'm not implying a violent posse here. Even a criminal would get a clue when there's suddenly a bunch of very pissed off people in front of his/her door.
If you don't want to take the call, the best thing you can do is hang up. It saves the operator (me at one time) a lot of time and frustration.
If the person calls back 2 or 3 times, you might want to take the call, however. The scammers/people who aren't who they say they are won't have you do that. The real deaf people are used to that, so they have you call back a few times in hopes to get a different person who will take the call, or give you a chance to convince the person to talk.
But if you still have no intention of taking the call, just hang up, saying as little as possible.
It saves the operators a lot of trouble.
//FIXME: Bad
Here's a simple fix:
Change the TTY/Realy number to a 1-900 numner and charge calls from whereever ther're made. Say $1.00 a minuite.
Then every month - Registered and bonified deaf people can submit a copy of their telephone invoice to the Federal Government and get a refund check for the amount used.
People who abuse the system without being daaf get to pay for it - deaf people get this vital service for free.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Can't the merchants just require the 3-digit security code on the back of the credit cards , if they're losing money?
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
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?
Relay companies get paid XX amount of dollars per day, assuming they can meet a certain service level. They have to answer calls queued into their system within a certain period of time. Every call that isn't answered is counted against their running total.
If a relay company falls below a certain percent (it's around 80% or so in a 24 hour period of time), they receive NO MONEY for that day. For the company I worked at, they had 1 day last year where they failed to maintain the standard. The amount of money lost for 1 day? Approaching $3 million according to management.
Anyone saying that business isn't a money making enterprise is full of BS.
Helen Keller. I would however be hard-pressed to name a smart AC.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
SMS. I noticed a deaf guy at a bar the other night thumbing away on his cellphone. Evidently having a very good conversation with whomever. I thought "now THERE is a good use for that technology". Obviously, the person on the other end needs one too, but it removes the relay person from the middle of the conversation.
How about AC Green? Played lots of professional basketball, is now a motivation speaker and business owner, and zero kids out of wedlock.
TTY = Teletypewriter
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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- Websites Fighting the Nigerian Scam/419
- Nigerian Advance Fee Scam
- US Secret Service on 419
- Break The Chain
- 419 Coalition (as noted in the article)
Here are a few sites dedicated to exposing 419 scammers in an interesting and/or amusing way:chongo (was here)
First, I think you are right about the accents. Because the scammers are pretending to be Americans (possessing credit cards of Americans) they would have a harder time on the phone, with their accents. Also, the call is free, as best as I can tell. Finally, I think there is the additional degree of anonymity, because there is no call to trace. I can only conclude that these advantages outweigh the unusual nature of the relay call.
So I have to put in my 250,000 lira. Mind you, this is never going to be noticed, due to my happy anonymity.
BUT:
I work for MCI Worldcom as a relay operator. More specifically, the California Relay Service (CRS). Our center handles calls from IP-RELAY.com (so do the Arizona Relay, the Tennessee Relay, and the Wisconsin Relay, if anyone cares). So all day, it's prank calls and Nigerian scammers. There are a few deaf people using the service, but not many. The signal-to-noise ratio is much too low, so to speak. I make a few measly dollars and hour to put up with this sort of shit. (But at least the health benefits are okay)
It's always Ghanans and Nigerians. Every single fucking time. Not Koreans or Israelis or anyone else. Most are in Accra, Ghana.
They buy very few computers, despite what the article says. Mostly, they call printing shops to order blank T-shirts. I'm not really very sure why printing, silkscreening, and embroidery shops would even sell blank white T-shirts in the first place, but they do. Did I mention it's always XXL and XXXL shirts? Don't let those Sally Struthers commercials fool you; people in Ghana are fucking CHUBBY.
Today, it was wedding dresses. I'm curious why people don't get suspicious when someone wants to order 6 wedding gowns over the phone. Especially when they don't care what sizes or styles, just the price. Not extra large, though, oddly enough, so maybe they're not all as chubby as it seems.
Some days it's shoes. Some days it's designer perfume. Or gold wristwatches. And some days it is in fact computers.
And 99% of the time, the credit card is declined. And 90% of the time when that happens, the fucking moron at whichever shop I'm calling will actually ask the person if they have another card. They always have a spare, sometimes with a completely different name.
Things to look for, if you're a store:
- The scammer will always ask to have the shop run the credit card while they are on the line. This means, in stores with only one line, that the credit card machine will AUTOMATICALLY approve the card if it passes whatever obscure checksum process they go through. Nice trick.
- The scammer will, if pressed for a phone number, say that it's not currently working. They don't claim to be deaf and have no phone, which is actually pretty common among the deaf. Instead, they give a phone number with too many digits to be a US number, or an email address. This email address will be composed of a foreign-sounding name, but it will NOT match the name the person gave on the card.
- The total price will be just shy of $10,000 to avoid hitting the card's limit, OR it will be some multiple of that, and the scammer will have several cards.
So, every now and then the scammer gets someone to ship him something, be it a half dozen BMW radiators or a $9000.00 Bernina commercial grade sewing machine. He gets his payoff. Congratulations, you stupid sons of bitches, you've successfully stolen things. What do you do with the money?
You give it to terrorists, of course, so they can go to pilot school. Allah Akbar! (or whatever) Thank goodness for weak extradition treaties, otherwise this wouldn't be possible.
So do the executives at MCI know about all of this? Of course. The government is giving them a whole fucking load of money every day to keep the relay centers open. Hope it's worth it, guys. As for me, I'm out of there as soon as I get my book written (never).