Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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?
Vonal Declosion
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.
Are you sure the return number is even theirs?
paintball
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.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
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.