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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...."
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!
http://www.access-board.gov/telecomm/marketrep/app endices/ttyvm.htm
That's 200000-700000 people using an older type of tty terminal. Maintaining a database and logs for this many users alone is a fair-sized task, and the offices are distributed nationwide.
I'm afraid a cost-benefit analysis would reveal that it's (currently) cheaper to let the scammers scam:(
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.
Free TTY services be allowed to issue usernames and passwords to their customers,
Yes. Requiring some sort of proof that the service is needed as you suggest might also be desirable.
keep text logs of the conversations,
No.
As I recall my sign language instructor explaining, the TTY Relay Service operator (and, I suppose, anything they might keep a hypothetical log with) is legally considered to be part of the telephone. They are NOT allowed to discuss anthing they hear; and any testimony they give about anything they have heard prior to a wiretap warrant being issued is legally inadmissable. You can be planning a murder, and the operator just has to relay the messages back and forth. It's a condition of legal privilege similar to those of spouses, doctors, lawyers, and the Secret Service.
Allowing mandatory logging would effectively put a bug into the phone of every deaf person who has need of this service. Any regulation or legislation permitting this would be struck down in court as a violation of the equal protection and reasonable search clauses.
As for the phone companies doing it themselves, they are under what is called "common carrier protection"-- they make no judgements over what to carry, they just send the voices back and forth, whether it's a call to mom or a death threat. Yes, harrassing calls are illegal, but the phone company only can take action AFTER the recipient complains. Logging, and revoking access based on use, would remove the Telco common carrier protection, and they REALLY don't want to do that. Not to mention the incidental that this might get them sued for civil rights violations under that pesky equal protection clause again.
This report does lead me to wonder, however. I recall being informed by a professor who specializes in history of computing that the phone phreak community back in the 1970's to 1990s was had a very large blind community. While speculations on the cause of that are moot to the matter at hand, there might actually be a group of deaf/hard-of-hearing folk who are gathering around this new (and even less moral) illegal activity. If so, it would be depressing.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, I just argue with one.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.