Stopping Overseas Fax Spam?

iotashan asks: "Likely for most businesses, unsolicited faxes have become quite a problem. They needlessly use up toner and paper, and are usually just scams anyway. Specifically, we are receiving faxes from a company called Flamingo Travel. Now, they appear to bug business across the US, and some innocent parties are falling victim. I have used their automated system for having my fax number removed, to no avail. Is my only weapon having a bunch of friends call this 800 number to make the company's overseas toll-free phone bill unbearable?"

"The latest fax listed a number to call to take advantage of the offer (800-328-9795), so I called it and asked to be removed. The woman took down my number, but rather smugly told me that they are in England so they do not have to obey the US unsolicited fax laws. She wouldn't provide me with any other company information, and then stopped answering calls from my number after repeated hang-ups. The FCC says that it is a civil matter, and to go through the courts. The Fax Preference Service in the UK says they cannot help people outside the UK. Do I have nowhere to turn except an expensive lawyer, armed with no information about the company?"

Comments

Spam him back

[CptChipJew]

Is my only weapon having a bunch of friends call this 800 number to make the company's overseas toll-free phone bill unbearable?

That's really not such a bad idea. Being that they're in an other country and illegally spamming, you can assume they aren't going to attempt to prosecute somebody that they themselves have illegally wronged.

Get a free VoIP service like Free World Dialup or something that lets you make 800 calls over the Internet. With most of them the caller ID shows up as random numbers across the US that they use to dial out. Then fax them tons and tons and tons of junk (read: goatse's) faxes through that.

Or you could just automate your VoIP program to call them every 30 seconds. Rack up the bills and annoy the hell out of them. Didn't Scott Richer get really pissed off when everybody submitted his email address to zillions of email lists?

Re:Spam him back

[Karamchand]

Be aware of the fact that it will stay a one time annnoyance if you call it once today. Therefor write down the number on a post it note, stick it to your monitor and call them now and them every day!

Re:Spam him back

[BasharTeg]

Hang on a second,

You think you're getting back at the spammer, but here's what's really happening. I work for a mid-sized toll free 800 services provider. These bastards sign up for our services, pay the first month's cost on the system, advertise illegally, and then never pay the cost of the usage. They collect whatever amount of successful business they get, many times by spamming starting Friday night so we don't get the complaints and shut them down until Monday morning, and then when we cancel their system for abuse, they don't pay the usage bill, which is often a flood of callers screaming at them in voicemail. Then a few of the callers look up who manages the 800 number of the spammer, figure out it is our company, and they call us and scream and/or report us to the FCC or FTC for spamming, when we're not the ones doing it. This is a very very common problem for 800 toll free services providers. There is little we can do to stop it. We rapidly answer supoenas from Attornies General of states, and we report these spammers to the FCC, including every bit of information we can gather regarding the spammer. Sometimes the systems are purchased with fake credit cards. We try to ban their names and aliases, and we have a person who visually screens the orders for known spammers and fake looking orders. With all of our efforts, and by complying with all telecom regulations and reporting fraud and phone/fax abuse to the FCC, we still suffer from these morons every month. There's nothing to stop some fax spammer from getting a new name, new credit card, buying an 800 number, fax spamming up a storm, and putting that 800 number they bought from us as the call-back number.

Now, we do NOT allow people to abuse our outbound fax system for the spamming, this is typically done either with their own equipment or through some spam-friendly service. Our fax system doesn't allow faxing to large enough groups of numbers for anything but standard office groupware type faxing. All of our outbound services are heavily monitored for abuse.

My point is this: You think by flooding the 800 number with phone calls and wasting their minutes that you are punishing the spammer. That's assuming the bastard is going to pay his bill, when quite frequently, he is not. We end up paying his bill while we do everything possible to rapidly kill spam accounts and report them to authorities. If you really want to help resolve this problem, the proper response is to report them to the FCC. If the FCC receives enough complaints, they act and people get taken down (we've seen it). You can easily fill out the abuse report form located here on the FCC's site: http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/cib/fcc475.cfm

Please, understand that unlike email spammers who have positive relationships with their providers, phone providers are actually under the gun with the FCC and rarely do they ever willingly partake in phone/fax spamming which is clearly illegal under FCC and FTC regulations. Since they aren't working with us in a positive relationship, they know they can screw us and not pay their bill.

Re:Spam him back

[Jeffrey Baker]

Sounds to me like this vigilante response is working perfectly. By putting pressure on you, the 800 service provider, the rabid posse is keeping the problem in check. You are highly motivated to remove the spammer and to not sign up their accounts. That seems to be the desired response.

I don't know anything about your business or the size thereof, but there are lots of ways to prevent getting scum for customers. You could only sign up customers with D&B numbers, require an audited credit statement, and so forth. Sounds to me like you want to not screen customers very carefully and also not endure the problems associated with bad customers.

Solution

[bobthemuse]

Call them under a pseudonym, tell them you want to place an order for group travel for your company, have them fax a quote to you. Chances are they will use their real fax machine (programmed with their real phone number) instead of the auto-dial bank. If you can scam them under the pretenses of faxing an order, that's even better. Have a local (or use cheap voip service) to spam them back a copy of their advertisement, marked up liberally with a black marker.

While it probably won't get you off the list, it will make you feel better.

Well...

[raehl]

Are you sure the return number is even theirs?

Re:Well...

[nacturation]

And the summaries always contain accurate information, right? It's not like the editors would have called up the number to verify the information (they don't even check links!) so, while this may be legitimate, it *is* possible to Joe-job someone using Slashdot.

Be careful with "revenge attacks"

[casual lemon]

The poster mentioned the Fax Preference Service in the UK wouldn't help him track down and stop a UK-based faxer. However, he didn't mention whether the FCC would help a non-US fax recipient track down and stop a US-based faxer. Perhaps someone can find and link to the FCC's policies regarding foreign complaints, but in the meantime, be careful with attacking back with auto-dialers, looping faxes, and the like (not that they don't deserve it...just don't set yourself up for more greif).

Re:International Law anyone

[JesseL]

That should be news for all the people that come from places where gambling is illegal, vacationing in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, etc.

Re:I just called

[gcaseye6677]

Nothing wrong with this. If the companies that are soliciting the spammer's services are paying lots of money only to have people bitch at them about junk faxes, they will probably demand a refund from the spammer. When they don't get it, they'll stop using the spammer. The end result: spamming is less profitable, and therefore not used as often.

Re:Black Construction Paper

[p4ul13]

They don't necessarily have to have toner in their fax machine in order to send these faxes to you. For that matter, they could (most likely) be sending the faxes through software.

The black paper trick is nice and all, but probably will just end up making your phone line busy.

Re:Brit Slashdotters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... A spammer told you they were in England -- and you BELEIVED them ?

I say old chap...

Re:Black Construction Paper

[MinusBlindfold]

a good number of companies are using electronic storage systems for their incoming faxes these days. So instead of using up their paper and toner you're really just eating up space on a hard drive.

My solution: "I won't purchase from you for a year

[B747SP]

I have a minor problem with junk fax and cold calling (call it voice-spam if you will) here in Sydney, Australia.

One of the most persistent offenders is a two-bit little box-pushing laser printer and supplies company in the north of Sydney called 'IT Imaging' (sales@itimaging.com.au). Their business practises are pretty suspect at the best of times, for eg I called them for a quote on a printer once (that I didn't go through with - too expensive) and they started calling my contemporaries in other departments saying "We're doing business with him, maybe you want to buy from us too?". They're big on junk faxes too.

When I get cold calls or junk faxes, I just add them to my "don't buy from these arseholes" list, and they stay there for a year. A polite email/fax to the effect of "As a direct and specific consequence of your decision to send me junk [mail|spam|call], I have added your company to my department's do-not-buy list, and your company will not be considered for any [insert product here] requirements for one year from this date]".

The Apple Centre in Taylor Square are another junk faxer of note here in Sydney, and they're pretty much a permanent resident on the "do not buy" list too!

Got a call from a girlie trying to be all official sounding, "calling on behalf of sales executive Mister Sales Droid from Fuji Xerox, wondering if you want to buy printers, blah blah". "We like Fuji Xerox as a company, here, because FX sustainable business practices are something we like, BUT, as a direct and specific result of your call...". They get off the phone real quick when you tell them that. I guess they want their year to start as soon as possible, so it will be over ASAP! :-)

Admittedly, this doesn't help with the anon and hard to contact fax spammers, but it seems to work pretty well on the ones who actually want to do quasi-legitimate business with you.

Use a fax-modem....

[billstewart]

OK, it's obvious how to implement this with paper faxes, but you _should_ be able to do more interesting things with fax-modems....

And they're almost certainly receiving the fax on a fax modem, so sending lots of black bits just uses up jpeg space, not human attention. You really want to send them lots of faxes that _look_ like they're real requests, so humans need to waste time reading them.

Re:Use a fax-modem....

[Feanturi]

OK, it's obvious how to implement this with paper faxes, but you _should_ be able to do more interesting things with fax-modems....

But isn't the paper-loop trick just as annoying on a fax-modem? Sure it's not wasting paper/toner on the other end (which is good for everyone really) yet it is hogging their resources. At least one modem from their pool will be out of 'normal' service all weekend while the loop runs. And that's if only one attacker is at work. Who cares if they readily recognize tons of obviously fake faxes when they come in on monday, the point is they couldn't get *any* real ones during the attack.

Not a reasonable solution

[Scott Richter]

Woops, sorry, this solution requires more effort than plugging the machine into the wall. How could I have even brought it up.

When you work for a company someday, you'll find that no one wants to pay someone to hack a damned fax machine solution. Believe it or not, most people have jobs that don't allow them such free time. Wanting to "just plug it in" is a quite reasonable expectation. Just because everyone around here has the time, skill, and disposition to fuck around with their hardware doesn't everybody does

Not to mention that a standard fax machine is simpler and more stable than a computer-based solution for those companies that aren't large enough to really devote time to doing it right.

Also, there are a lot of reasons why someone's info might not show up on Caller ID - such as being behind a PBX in some instances - and that would basically be giving up on business.

All in all, that was a very good suggestion for those who don't actually have to run a real business.

Re:Not a reasonable solution

[HBI]

Umm, dude, i've been in business probably longer than you have. People like you are the people I make irrelevant and replace. They fail to implement solutions. Your willingness to accept anachronisms is the problem, not my desire to fix problems. You can argue the details all day long - there is a solution to every problem.

Better watch out behind you, someone is ready to do what you are afraid to do.

Re:Not a reasonable solution

[Scott Richter]

Umm, dude, i've been in business probably longer than you have. People like you are the people I make irrelevant and replace. They fail to implement solutions. Your willingness to accept anachronisms is the problem, not my desire to fix problems. You can argue the details all day long - there is a solution to every problem.

Unless you're willing to work for free, not everyone has the willingness or ability to pay you. As for your "solution," caller ID can be spoofed, and you ignore the problem where businesses don't have the luxury to lose business to the multitude of people behind PBX's. I have to deal constantly with smartasses who thought they could fix things but screw them up even worse. People would rather deal with a few junk faxes than lose business because a customer's order got rejected.

Make sure your "solution" doesn't cause more problems than it fixes. In this case, the best solution is a garbage can near the fax.

on the other hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

who's to say that this # or any/all of the others mentioned in the comments are spammers? What a great way to piss off a legit faxer: tell /. they're spammers and watch them get taken out of business...

HOW I FOUGHT IT AND WON!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, slashdot is definitely the arena to put something like this if you want mass calls. If you don't have access to this though you may be able to fight it a different way. Here's an example...

I got those same FaxSpam messages and tried getting unsubscribed many many times. I left messages, I left my contact information and in turn got fed up and applied a technical response to the problem.

The number listed on my FaxSpam was a 3+ minute recording of some guy yacking about the fool proof money making method of the month. I'm sure it cost him $.25 per call considering the legth of the message.

I had a bank of innactive modems for a newly de-installed dial-in system for my company. I fired it back up and attached it to a management computer. I then proceeded to plug all 48 modems back into our PBX lines (no numbers listed to be blocked) and wrote a cute script to war-dial on all 48 modems the 800 number listed. I ran the script for about an hour to test its stability and then shut it off.

I figured I'd give the spammer one more shot to remove my company's information and called the number in person. I left a polite message saying who I was and that I was once again requesting to be removed from his fax list. I left my number and a temporary e-mail address saying, that I was aware of how much each call was costing him and that I would repeatedly call to take up his time and money. I waited 24 hours and gave him every chance to remove me. That next night we received the same barage of fax spams to all of the fax machines at my company. I turned my script back on and let the program run away. It ran for about 36 hours before I received a call back from the guy that ran the FaxSpam list. He had left the message whie I was out of my office but it boiled down to him begging me to stop calling. By the time I got the message(2 hours later), the 800 number had been disconnected. We noticed a significant drop-off in FaxSpam before I left the company.

Answered your own question...

[Angst Badger]

Do I have nowhere to turn except an expensive lawyer, armed with no information about the company?

No, you could always post an article on Slashdot with the actual 800 number, implicitly urging innumerable irritable geeks to inundate them with bizarre crank calls.

Wait, you already did that.

Re:How to fake an order

[NewtonsLaw]

The problem is that providing a fake CC number is probably a crime -- maybe even a felony.

They could argue that you tried to fraudulently obtain a product using a credit card number you knew to be invalid or which you had no authority to use.

Got to be careful, a pissed-off spammer can be an wicked beast and may just decide to make an example of someone. At least cover your tracks by calling from a public phone.

vigilante

[chri]

I run a home business, and I feel utterly at the mercy of these parasites. Between calls, faxes and junk email, I am kept in a constant state of agitation and unproductivity. My plan has always been that if my business ever fails and I no longer have any monetary assets to loose, I will drop out of society and drift from city to city sabotaging telemarketers (stealing paper and toner, cutting phone lines, etc... nothing too violent). It is pleasing to know that I have a fall-back plan.

I don't mean to give anyone ideas, but I'd be surprised if among the entire Slashdot community there isn't someone ready to do this. Such a person would become a hero to millions! One drawback is the possibility of prison time, and potential mistreatment - so keep this in mind. Also, don't physically hurt anyone.

Re:My solution: "I won't purchase from you for a y

[Anonymous Coward]

The first is that if a new company starts up, they have to find a way to get their name out there to businesses in some way.

It's called: take out a Google ad or an ad in a newspaper, or advertise to your cronies (who wouldn't mind getting in touch with you again). Pass out coupons, everybody loves a "deal", but make sure you print them out at your own cost. Pissing off potential customers is no way to get business. Reminds me of the v|@gr4 spammers. Why do they keep adding typos into their messages? Because people are filtering out messages containing those words. Why are people filtering out those words? Because they don't want to listen to these spammers? Why are these spamming companies trying to thwart the filter? Beats me. Some people just need a lead pipe to the head.

some more numbers for the bored

[menscher]

It's great to save your junk mail in a folder, cause then you can grep for (800) numbers. Here are a few from the past week:

1-800-KaBloom
1-800-884-9510

The first seems to want to sell flowers. You have to press 1 or 2 to talk to someone, so configure that into your modem dial scripts (a comma will add a pause in the dial sequence, so put in enough to let them answer before autodialing the extension).

The second is trying to sell computers, and a human answers right away.

I chatted with the people at both ends, and they were quite friendly. They said I'd have to ask customer service if I wanted to get my questions answered about how profitable their spamming was. Unfortunately customer service has already gone home for the day.

Have fun!

Re:Dial-a-thon

[jmichaelb]

The solution is not vigilantism. Calling a number to harass the company and its employees is illegal, immoral and cannot be justified.

This is a blatant call to action for vigilante harassment. It is irresponsible and unjustifiable to publish such an article.

Yes, this company is scum sucking slime. If you call a toll-free just to harass them, so are you.

Re:Dialing error rate

[Anonym0us Cow Herd]

the phone system itself is responsible for some misdials. The original analog phone system design requirement was for high availability, i.e. the system is always up and running.

Just to point out that the when the phone system was designed, they had no term "high availability". It is a machine. They built it well. Just as everyone who built any kind of machine at the time.

The term "high availability" wasn't invented (due to lack of necessity) until people began attempting to run web servers on Windows.

Necessity is the mother of invention. (Lazyness is the father.)

Complain to Ofcom (Office of Communications).

[Martin Spamer]

Nuisance/Unsolicited calls or fax are certainly against the rules and the company can be cut off of even prosecuted.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk.