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Caller ID Spoofing Firm Gets Death Threats
Frankie70 writes "Three days after the startup company Star38 began offering a service that fools Caller ID systems, the founder, Jason Jepson, has decided to sell the business. Jepson said he had received harassing e-mail and phone messages and even a death threat taped to his front door -- all of which he said came from people opposed to his publicizing a commercial version of technology that until now has been mainly used by software programmers and the computer hackers' underground. Details in the Houston Chronicle. Earlier ZDnet article about the service."
I've never been the target of one myself, but I used to always wonder why bankruptcy lawyer commercials always said stuff like "Stop creditor harassment."
I always thought, "Well honestly, if you're not going to pay your bills, then you should expect people to ask you for the money."
Nope. Its harassment. Its actually frightening stuff. I first started learning about this when I received an odd message on my answering machine. It was from someone from "Kansas City" who said that she was despirately trying to get in contact with my neighbor, and that she had called the police and they had said I was a neighbor, and could I PLEASE tape a note to their door giving them her number."
Well, it sounded fishy, so I called the number myself late at night after hours. The answering message didn't say where I had called, but I waited and found it was a collection agency.
Basically, they lied to ME, a 3rd party, to try and get me to do their fucking job for them, and probably ruin my relationship with my neighbors in the process. They clearly didn't call the police about an emergency like they implied. I'm glad I checked up with them, i'm sure my other neighbors got similar messages.
These people do everything short of theatening to break your fingers. They'll say "We're going to call your boss and tell them you're not paying your bills. I'm going to try and get you fired." They threaten to tell your neighbors, to tell your children's school, etc. They'll call you 5-7 times a night demanding that you immediately send them the money.
There have been many stories of people who sent them a part of their bill, and then the collection agencies illegally used their checking account number to withdraw the whole amount, causing a chain reaction of them now being late on ALL of their bills, instead of the one they just couldn't pay.
So its no surprise that collection agencies would use something like this to fool people.
Yes, some people are deadbeats, but there are a lot of people who have lost their jobs and need to choose between food and their gas bill.