Slashdot Mirror
Sprint Cracks Down on TTY Relay Abuses
An anonymous reader writes "Sprint thinks it has found a way to keep West African scam artists from using Sprint's deaf-relay service to defraud people." Our previous two stories have background information.
I know our web hosting business has had quite a bit of fraud the past few days which has resulted in me finding a big list of 1,700 anonymous/open proxies and then blacklisting them/their IP addresses. Ok - it won't block every single one, but hopefully it'll block the majority/well known ones.
It's a cut-and-paste of a comment from a previous story
As a South African, let me assure you we are annoyed by West African/Nigerian just as much as anywhere in the world. Arguably Xenophobia (against Nigerians) is today a larger problem todya then racism was for us in the past.
It should be noted that the above post is ripped from the previous article, and was originally posted by n1ywb. The original post can be read here.
Parent is a karma whore.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
You (and a lot of people) are missing a key fact: the relay service is ALSO legitimately used by hearing people to call deaf people. You can't just require everyone who uses the service to "prove you're deaf", or whatever.
Perhaps you have not gotten the 300+ Emails that I have gotten ... all people from or claiming to be from Nigeria. (There have been arrests for Nigerian scammers that are Europeans claiming to be from Nigeria). Thus 'Nigerian scam'.
Perhaps you are relegated to posting at -1 because of the inflamatory way in which you ask questions. Claim that three-digit area-codes could apply to Africa *they don't*, and seem to imply that there is a conspiracy against Nigeria (which is the origination of the classic Nigerian scam). Read the FAQ I linked above and educate yourself.
Unlikely as it is, they have to pay with their own money... not stolen credit cards!
Our little site gets these Nigerians attempting to purchase with stolen credit cards. It's pretty easy to spot, as we've never has a legitimate order to Nigeria... but it's an annoyance.
Eventually, I ended up logging their IP numbers and now I just drop any packet that appears to have originated in Nigeria. Worked pretty well so far... might have to imclude open proxies if they start using them. For anyone else faced with the same problem, here's a little list:
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I worked for one of the internet relay companies for a year and a half. The nature of the service really prevents a lot of options that seem common sense to techies unfamiliar with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). The internet service needs to emulate the anonymous call setup - no logins, IDs, etc., unless you want to profile yourself or use spell dialing. Registration isn't allowed. The services can (but often don't) block IP ranges, but I think we all know how easy that is to get around. Using a proxy with a dial up connection from Africa makes the service incredibly slow.. so they are prone to drop out, although a lot of fraud callers will keep up 10 conversations at one time. Their strategy is making hundreds of calls and eventually one gullible American is going to fall for the scam. One successful $5,000 fraud a week is a lot more than they could make there. These calls are NOT going to stop as long as there are internet relay services. The big relay companies make money of each call even if they're fradulent, so they have no incentive to block the service other than to stop the tide of bad press and quitting employees. It's a wonderful service for the deaf and speech disabled (TTY phone technology is a joke), but I think it's a matter of opinion as to whether or not it's worth the flood of American taxpayer dollars going down the drain to pay for fraud.