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Internet Phones & Identity Theft

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.

flaws writes "A CNN story details how phishers are using Internet Phones to expand their identity theft endeavors. The article demonstrates the use of caller-id spoofing to companies such as Western Union to thwart their verification system and successfully launder money. Western Union commented on the situation, stating at this time it's the only way they know how to authenticate the call. The anti-phishing working group states that telecommunications abuse is being used to fool home users into revealing their bank information over the phone."

3 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. I fell for one of these by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I got a call supposedly from a Timothy at Slashdot. The caller indicated they needed my help in verifying some spelling and asked if I recalled seeing a proposed story before. They indicated they needed my social security and mother's maiden name so they could verify my karma level. Needless to say the ThinkGeek coffee mug did not make up for the fact my savings account was drained.

  2. Umm by mindstrm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If western union is using caller ID to authenticate financial matters, western union is being stupid. IT's always been possible to fake caller ID.

    Let's not blame voip.

  3. This is nothing. Phisher's are getting really bold by gru3hunt3r · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I work for an an e-commerce software company that processes several million dollars in sales a month.

    In the past few weeks we've had scam artists targeting our customers offering to do free SEO analysis only to get in and download their customer base.

    They claim to be partners of ours, and they tell the business they need admin access to do the study and they'll give them a free report.

    Of course they get in, as admin, then they download the order history and customer list and start calling the customers saying "we had a problem with your order can you please verify your credit card number ending in [last 4 digits]" and most honest people happily oblige by repeating the valid credit card number over the phone. Then they ask for the CVV/CID # Yeoch!
    Fortunately a lot of our sales go through Paypal which isn't subject to that sort of phraud.

    I figure a single break in could easily net them 50,000 valid credit cards. Very scary.

    I suspect the calls originate from hacked out IP Phones.

    Here's how we fixed the problem so that our customers they could verify the identity of our staff and our legitimate partners:

    http://webdoc.zoovy.com/info/index.php?GOTO=guide/ authkey.php