Slashdot Mirror
VoIP to Fuel Plague of 'Dialing for Dollars'/Spam
Ant writes "Broadband Reports says Internet News is exploring how telemarketers world-wide are realizing they can dodge long-distance costs (and U.S. "Do Not Call" restraints) by voice spamming VoIP users. Different from SPIT (spam over internet telephony) because it's not automated, an analyst in the article predicts homes and businesses could see some 150 calls a day from overseas call centers."
I am surprised that this hasn't happened sooner but I believe it will happen. I wonder what sort of culture shock we will have when our home telephones are rendered useless because they ring non-stop? I am getting just over 400 email spam a day so 100 to 150 phone calls a day (especially at a cost of only a penny or so each according to the article) seems believable. While spam filtering rids me of all but two or three email spam a day in my inbox, is there a technology that will do the same for my home phone. God, this sure will be interesting (and yes, I understand I have employed a bit of hyperbole).
http://www.busyweather.com/
What happens if the cost of each almost-continuous call is incremental?
Say the first 10 VOIP calls are free, and if you make the 11th call within 5 minutes of the 10th call, you pay 1 cent, and if you make your 12th call within 5 minutes of your 11th call, you pay 2 cents, then 4 cents, 8 cents and so on.
Private callers shouldn't have to pay anything due to the engaging nature of personal calls.
Businesses will have to register to get exemption from the charges, thus easily identifiable.
Like spam filters, this won't stop spammers from spamming, but hopefully it's enough to make it less profitable.
We didn't see email spams coming, but we should definitely do something on VOIP when we have the opportunity.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
"The average enterprise or household could see as much as 150 calls a day from these telemarketers. It has to happen, because it is a market force that takes the market feedback and makes it into a profitable approach."
:-P
Ah, so this is how they are going to use all that dark fiber.
Seriously though, it would be in the phone companies best interest to figure out how to block this. After the legislation for the do not call list, calls to our home plummeted. And rightly so. If I have to deal with telemarketers calling my home again, I will simply have the phone company disconnect my land line, especially with the prospect of 100-150 calls/day. Most people that really need to get ahold of me immediately can use the cell phone or email/IM me anyway. As for calling people at work, I cannot figure out how businesses will tolerate this. Businesses will be more likely to pressure phone companies to limit this kind of activity as it impacts productivity.
So, I don't really care how they do it, but from an end users perspective......They can either fix the loopholes and prevent phone spam or they will lose business.
On another note. Serious question to all the Slashdotters: Has anyone here actually bought ANYTHING from a telemarketer who called you? I have never purchased any good or service solicited over the phone, and I am wondering who it is that actually keeps these knuckleheads in business.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Gentlemen, start up your whitelists!
You mean U.S. laws don't apply everywhere? We should get that law changed!
I'm a big tall mofo.
Russia, China, India... Who'd have thought these would be new sources of spam?! I routinely block these domains/net blocks from sending email into our networks (along with a few of the other well known spam sludge pits), so would it really be that difficult to firewall out all VOIP traffic from these places too? Maybe if enough people just cut them off they'd change their attitudes to providing havens for (mostly) American spam "companies".
In fact, I'd imagine these call centres would be easier to firewall off the 'net than spammers, as it would be harder to switch net blocks once a blackhole service was set up to list the offending address ranges.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
So how long until someone hunts down those IPs and offers up a list for call blocking of them? Also, how long until someone writes a program that will DDoS of some form or another those same call centers or something similar that will harass the call centers?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
So, when one of these turkeys calls me, I can keep them on the line until I traceroute where his call is coming from, then go after him and his ISP with any number of legal charges as well as possible DDoSs.
Yes, that sounds like a GREAT way to make money.
www.eFax.com are spammers
And with VoIP it would be quite easy to enable an easy to update whitelist for inbound calls. People could use something like the various spam blocking sites (i.e. Spamhaus) that would put and end to that crap.
/dev/null.
/dev/null. I would sort of expect these options to be built into the software and easily enabled by end users as that would make the most sense.
There are so many possibilities for controlling this crap that I don't even want to go into it. Personally? I would use my addressbook (LDAP?) as the whitelist. Anyone else would get a message to find another way to contact me to be added to the whitelist, to enter the passcode to get through, or they be routed to
Anyone showing up as "UNKNOWN", "UNAVAILABLE", or originating numbers coming from outside the country would automatically be re-routed to
Yeah, it could cause you to lose some callers. How many times do people call you that you don't know and that you actually want to hear from? I'll take the 1 caller a year that doesn't know the passcode and can't find another way to contact me.
YMMV.
It's already starting.
Ignoring people who have abandoned land-line phones for wireless, most of my friends are in the "phone by appointment only" mode.
If you want to talk to me on a land line, email (or IM) me first and tell me when you'll call. Otherwise, the damn thing stays unplugged, and/or with the ringer off. If I ain't expecting someone's call, it ain't getting answered.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
until I start re-routing their calls to each other. Think of it, a simple firewall that sits on your network that re-routs overseas calls to each other. Just keep a list of numbers and add new ones as they come in, completely automated...get a couple thousand Voice over IP users to do this and viola, problem solved. Old fashioned ping of death, DOS attacks. Perfectly legitimate because I am just returning their calls right???
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
However, we're also going to need some software tools. A lot of sites, my own workplace included, are rolling out VoIP systems. Some of these are COTS systems of various levels of quality. Others (like us) are using open systems like Asterisk PBX and SIP Express Router (SER). Currently, as far as I have seen neither the proprietary nor the open tools have what it takes regarding abuse rejection:
Actually we did. The infamous Green Card Lawyers carpet-bombing Usenet told everybody paying attention that we stop it now, or it will only get worse.
Problem with politicians is that they don't react to a problem until after it has grown out of control. And they don't listen to the people who do see it coming.
That's why to this day, CB radio skips clear around the world. They didn't listen to the experts about assigning frequencies. Even now, with spam a problem for everyone, there is little in the way of effective law against it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Hi this is John. I am screening my calls. Please leave a voicemail and I will call you back."
"Hi John, this is Pete. You just tried to call me, and left me voicemail about my attempted call a few minutes ago. Please call me back."
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Anyone that runs a voip system can always have the system route UNKNOWN or ANONYMOUS callers to a computer based screening tool. One bored gent wrote an elaborate voice-mail maze for telemarketers to wander into.
Telemarketer Torture
So far the only prank SIP call I have received was one from a buddy that was testing his SIP knowledge and wanted to see if he could really make my phone ring.
"Russia, China, India... Who'd have thought these would be new sources of spam?!"
Make sure you add to your list America's own 2nd/3rd world state, Florida.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
You're missing the point here. The cell phone companies want you to use your phone. You don't have unlimited cell phone service. The more minutes you use, the more you pay. This is to their advantage, because where else are you going to go?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The article is talking about marketting spam launched using VOIP on the caller side. The receiver will get the call on any old telephone hook-up IE POTS or VOIP.
A firewall won't do a thing to protect you. A caller ID based black list of challenge/response system could though.
better yet, we need to port ELIZA to voice recognition/speach synthesis. Plug 'em into that, and it doesn't even matter if the recognition rate is say 60% or so.
As someone who worked as a Telemarketer for about a year, i can tell you that this will happen. the company that I recently worked for was putting together a "voIP team" to tackle all the new tech popping up around it. Sad that this is the world we live in now, where people feel the only way to sell a product is to market it directy to someone over something as personal as a Telephone.
"The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars" - Johnny Cash
I dont think this will ever happen, Ive been in telemarketing for 5 years and the hardest sells are always the customers who receive more cold calls a day from other telemarketing companies. Now if everyone was getting 150 calls per day I dont care what the call costs are, paying my wage is too expensive for my boss if im never going to make a sale.
serenity now!
PHLEGM PHoning Longdstance by Eurasian Gangs / Marketers
Use the laws to file a lawsuit against the spammers that spam or the people who hire the spammers. Spamming is motivated by profit, lawsuits against spamers will remove that motivation.
I got spammed by Avtech Direct. I sent a demand letter, they were nasty in their response. I filed a lawsuit against them, and arranged for 15 other people to file lawsuits. When they appeared in court against me, I served them with the 20 other lawsuits. So far, only 5 of 21 cases were heard, they have over $11,000 in judgments against them. I have not seen any spam from them since.
Fight Spammers!
The Thread suggests that this will be a problem for VoIP users only; but it seems to me that the overseas callcenters will call whoever they want regardless of what type of carrier the call-recepient uses. I don't think it is less expensive for them to call another VoIP line than it is for them to call a land-line or cell phone, but maybe I'm wrong.
Another thing... Is there a way that VoIP numbers are indexed or listed? Is there such thing as a listed or unlisted VoIP line?
It depends on how the telemarketer connects to the VoIP network. If they're coming in from the PSTN, then the source IP will be the PSTN gateway where they enter the IP world.
While this isn't so bad if the telemarketer is running their own analog-to-IP telephone adaptor/IAD/Asterisk etc., it is quite problematic if the gateway belongs to a major carrier for a large exchange (say, for example, in NYC.)
PSTN carriers can't risk common carrier status by filtering or denying access to telemarketers (e.g. they can't operate like an ISP with an AUP against spamming) so they can't stop the traffic themselves. And you could be cutting off connectivity to large portions of the PSTN every time you apply a filter. Even if it worked for awhile, eventually you would notice severe end-to-end connectivity problems.
It is based on what we think the fairness is. I don't think most people here would fault the MPAA for going that to someone who is copying DVDs and selling them on a street corner for $5/each.
Fight Spammers!