Slashdot Mirror
TrapCall Service To Bypass Caller ID Blocking
cemaco writes in with news that TelTech, developers of the infamous SpoofCard service, have come out with something even more controversial: a set of services for revealing blocked caller ID numbers. The services take advantage of a loophole in the way caller ID blocking works — it has never been effective when calling an 800 number, because the recipient is paying for the call. So TelTech instructs you how to forward blocked calls (transparently) to their 800 number; the call comes back to your phone in seconds with the formerly hidden caller ID revealed. Advocacy groups for victims of domestic violence are concerned. Victims of annoying calls hiding behind caller ID blocking are rejoicing.
Advocacy groups for victims of domestic violence are concerned
What about ?
If you are calling me then I have a right to know who you are AFAIC.
Personally, I don't think it should be possible to block caller ID. If you want to be anonymous, find a different phone to use. Pick up a temporary pre-paid cell phone. Get a new one every month. For things where there is a truly legitimate need for anonymity, like domestic abuse, have an option for blocking that requires a court order to enable.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Advocacy groups for victims of domestic violence are concerned.
Why? Because this doesn't allow victims to harass their abusive partners anonymously? I fail to see what legitimate use caller ID blocking has in a domestic dispute. If anything, this should be a benefit since it destroys the anonymity of a harassing caller.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
The State of Michigan and I believe 6 other states passed laws written by the RIAA to make it a felony to mask your IP address. The laws were written so broadly though, that masking the information about any electronic identity would constitute a crime including caller ID.
Many states modified this before passage, but Michigan and several other states just passed the RIAA bill as submitted.
It is a class 3 felony to block caller ID in Michigan.
Thanks RIAA
* Carthago Delenda Est *
... I always felt that blocked calls were the equivalent of someone showing up at your front door with a paper bag (with eye-holes) over their head, and they won't reveal who they were until you answer the door.
Of course it just may end up generating more business for the SpoofCard....
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Sounds like something a certain bear at a certain /b/ would set up.
This is old. I've been doing this for years.
I pay $10 a month with tollfreemax and get an 800 number, and forward all my calls to it, then it rings back to my second line. I get callerID on every call.
[The phone clicks. Frank puts the phone down. The gadget bleeps. Roedecker holds it
out for Frank to see. The readout notes, "Anonymous Caller."]
ROEDECKER: Well, obviously whoever called has blocked caller ID. The phone
company does it for a price.
[Frank snatches back the check out of Roedecker's hands.]
ROEDECKER: Whoa, whoa! All you need now is a device to undo their caller block.
[Roedecker hastily grabs a package from a nearby chair and takes off the lid. It's
another gadget, the LMU-83.]
ROEDECKER: The LMU 83 will override their override very nicely. It's a little more
James Bondian but we are living in a more Blofeldian world.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
They sell one product to FALSIFY the callerID (spoofcard) not to block it. The other product reveals callerID that was blocked.
So if someone is using spoofcatd, this new service will not affect them at all... the spoofed callerID will be displayed. Big deal.
It's one thing to block your callerID from being presented to the end user - in that case, the intermediary telcos will still be able to see the callerID; they pass it between themselves, but just don't pass it to the final end user. That's how this system works -- because they're a telco, they get to see the callerID, but unlike other telcos, they've decided to pass the information on regardless.
But what about spoofed callerIDs? They're the ones that I feel would be genuinely useful to unmask. But sadly, this system won't work in these cases. If the callerID is tampered with at source, that tampered value is what gets passed between the telcos, so there's nothing useful that can be unmasked.
1000 to 1? 10,000 to 1? Even higher, with most people going through their entire lives never needing to block their number, but often having people they don't know or don't want to talk to blocking theirs?
If a victim of domestic violence wants to contact their abuser for some reason, but doesn't want the latter to know their number, I'm certain there will be several groups willing to pass on a message -- family, friends, domestic violence shelter, church groups, what have you. There is no need to hide the vast majority of morons, salesmen, and other jerks from blocking their number when they are calling me.
I would go so far as to say that people should have the right to say that they will not accept calls where the originating number is hidden -- just have a recorded message in the phone company switch that says "We're sorry, but the party you are contacting does not accept blocked caller-ID calls. Please remove the block and try again."
My telco advertises *657 service (I may have those numbers slightly wrong) to report harassing phone calls, despite caller ID. Simply dial the code and it replies telling you that the call has been logged. If a police report is also filed, these records are given directly to the police, or if a certain number of these automated complaints are made, a report is automatically filed.
The same thing can be achieved by calling the operator immediately after the phone call and reporting it as harassing. The phone company knows who called you, they don't like people abusing the service any more than landlords appreciate the loud annoying neighbour that makes people move out of their buildings.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
This is actually an incredibly good point....lets take this a few steps further and say I set up my home phone to call-forward to a 900 # or a number in Zimbabwe. Is the caller who called my (local) number liable for the charges incurred from the call now being forwarded to a possibly extremely expensive toll call destination??!? If so, I've got a new April Fools practical joke all lined up now :) This just seems wrong, the forwarding party, not the caller, should be liable for the billing (and therefore should be the one showing up on the AIN to the 800 #), not the original caller.
I can't believe the ignorance of the referenced article. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_identification for an intelligent explanation of what's happening. The important part is...
>>>
Because ANI is unrelated to caller ID, the caller's telephone number and line type
are captured by ANI equipment even if caller ID blocking is activated. The destination
telephone company switching office can relay the originating telephone number to ANI
delivery services subscribers. Toll-free Inward WATS number subscribers and large
companies normally have access to ANI information, either instantly via installed
equipment, or from a monthly billing statement. Residential subscribers can obtain
access to ANI information through third party companies that charge for the service.
>>>
To summarize...
* There are 2 *TOTALLY UNRELATED* means of getting *THE NUMBER THAT IS CALLING YOU*
* Caller ID (technically CNID) sends the callers number during the ringing signal.
Any outfit with their own PBX can send out whatever crap they want as CNID.
That's how spoofing services work, and how telemarketers can fake CNID
* ANI (Automatic Number Identification) is billing information data. Spoofing that
effectively constitutes fraud. And you can be certain that phone companies will
do whatever is necessary to make sure their billing systems work . ANI is very
difficult to spoof.
Having said that, TrapCall can be beaten. Not spoofed, but beaten. ANI passes the number making the call. If you call via Skype, your call is forwarded to Skype, who then forwards the call to the destination. The destination gets Skype's billing data. This is technically correct, but useless for identifying the originator. Oh yeah, Skype pays connection charges at the receiving end, so don't expect them to freely work for 1-900 numbers. This is roughly equivalant to calling from New York to Los Angeles to ask your brother to pass on a message to someone in Atlanta. The person in Atlanta knows they got called by somebody from Los Angeles. This is technically correct, but doesn't let them know that the message originated from New York.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
The service's site is http://www.trapcall.com./ Seems to be missing from the article.
There was no such thing as caller ID. All calls were anonymous. When it was proposed there was outcry from the privacy groups and tin-hat brigade. I know many people who have their caller ID blocked by default. Why shouldn't they? Also in the UK all toll-free numbers NEVER get your caller ID, even if you don't block it. Seems you yanks have everything upside down to me...
Why does a listener try to communicate to someone that initially does not identify themselves, then if the listening caller does not know them, the caller does not identify that they are the agent for someone else. Lastly, why does the caller feel compelled to not identify their intentions.
I happily use Google's Grand Central(in eternal beta, so getting a telephone number may require a wait) it allows me to block all calls with no ID , forward them to a specific spam voice mail box or to my general voice mail (without even ringing my phones). You can even record a custom greeting >;-}
It also carries a known spam caller telephone list that you can subscribe to - they will automatically get dropped or straight to spam voice mail box.
Since changing my cell phone number I have given out my grand central number to everyone but family. It certainly reduces the number of people I need to tell if I switch cell phone provider (and number) in the future too - I'm not going thought the hassle of number porting.
From the linked article:
He also expects his new business will be good for his old one.
"The only way to block your number after this is released is to use Spoofcard," he says with a laugh.
Basically the TrapCall service is extortion to get people to buy their SpoofCard service.
Short-term things to try:
1) Third-party-routed calling that make all calls come "from" the 3rd party. The tech is cheap enough to make this commercially viable for people who aren't victims, and charities, governments, and in-kind donations from service providers can cover the cost for victims.
2) Telco forging of originator telephone numbers: If you use *69, send a generic phone number instead of the real phone number. I'm not a telephone techie, this may break things, so viability would have to be checked before it's done.
Long-term:
Change the call-forwarding mechanism so if calls are forwarded, the only calling-station information available to the final or intermediate destinations are those available to the original destination. This might require technical and/or legal changes. I've got a hunch that with today's phone system, the en-route and final-destination telephone switches will have to "know all," but there is no reason the end customer at the final destination should know more than the original destination, even for 800 calls. If billing is an issue, then charge the end user as if the call made from the forwarding phone, not the originating phone. The original caller is already paying as if the call was not forwarded.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The service doesn't reveal your number if they're calling YOU, only if you're calling THEM. According to the article, the reason that domestic abuse people are concerned is because there are situations where an abused spouse might need to call her abuser (such as calls about their kids) but doesn't want to abuser knowing the number where they're calling from.
Personally, I think this is a pretty flimsy excuse. Abuse victims shouldn't be in contact with their abusers, period. If they need to deal with custody issues, they should be doing it through a third party or from a disposable cell phone or pay phone. And if an abuse victim is stupid enough to be contacting their abuser using their new home phone, then there is nothing you can do to protect them anyway (you can't stop someone from being a dumbass).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Trace Buster Buster!
Wait, what? Domestic violence groups are pissed? I can't understand why... its bad to know when the abusive boyfroemd calls? Or is it bad for the abusive boyfriend to know that the reason he hasn't gotten sleep (and has henceforth turned violent) in a month is because his girlfriend's lover has been calling his phone all damn night from a blocked number?
Until someone accidentally forwards ALL their calls to this 800 number and then the 800 number forwards the calls to their home line. Are they going to have some type of TTL? =)
The only thing new here is that the service is being marketed, and the public is finding out about it.
If you call forward your landline to a toll-free number, which itself is programmed to forward the
calls it receives to a second number (say your cell), the callerID on the cell phone will display the number that would have been blocked if you had just taken the call at your landline.
I do not know whether ALL toll-free companies do this, or just some of them.
Here's how it all works.
Toll-free numbers have been around for decades longer than callerID. And it makes perfect sense that people who pay for a long distance call (the 800 number owner) should see the caller's number.
The mechanism used for doing this is called ANI, and it's been around since the 1960's at least.
There is no provision for blocking the calling party's number with this mechanism. (ANI stands for automatic number identification.)
Fast forward a few decades to the invention of something very new, Signaling System Seven (SS7).
It provides a whole new way to provide a caller's number to the called party, and it has various blocking options included. However, anytime a caller's number is supposed to be blocked, it really isn't -- it is always sent. However, a special one-bit flag is ALSO sent that says "Please
don't reveal this information even tho I am supplying you with it." Then if the equipment at the receiving end thinks it has a good enough reason, it strips out the "privacy requested" flag.
Now, there is nothing that says that an SS7 switch which is handling incoming 800 calls HAS TO
strip the privacy. The old ANI mechanism is still available, and SS7 does not have to treat 800 calls differently, but at least for some long distance companies, it does.
I have a question: does anyone know whether this SS7 privacy stripping on toll free calls is explicitly authorized? Or did companies exploit a loophole and just implement the SS7 software that way on purpose. A technical disadvantage to the old ANI system is that the calling number is not transmitted until AFTER the phone call is answered.
And then they're offering call recording also. When call recording is performed by a carrier, it doesn't necessarily wait for the call to be answered before it starts recording. I don't know about the Trap Call people. But there are services that will allow you to record what your caller
is saying about you before you answer the phone, while the caller is still hearing ringing.
Quote:
"Oh Mr. Hoover, you just don't understand. We are not subject to city, state or federal regulation. We are Omnipotent. OMNIPOTENT! That's PO-TENT with an OMNI in front of it."
-- Lily Tomlin portraying power-mad telephone operator "Earnestine" from the album
"This is a Recording". Mr Hoover is J. Edgar ("Jedgar") Hoover,
Director of the FBI.
Hide all sigs: Click HELP+Prefs (top), VIEWING (last on right), DISABLE SIGS (3rd on left) and SAVE (hidden at bottom).
AFAICT = As Far As I Can Tell
AFAIK = As Far As I Know
IMHO = In My Humble/Honest Opinion
And, while I'm ahead, I might GTFO.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Makes it easier to report violaters of the do not call list. Anything that causes trouble for telemaketwits is a very good thing!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
There is a simple answer, and it doubles as a science project. (Yay, science!)
Step 1: Use the shelter phone system to call the abuser using the SpoofCard service. Spoof the number of the abuser.
Step 2: The abuser is using the CallerID Unblocking service, thus setting up an infinite loop and based on my understanding of cartoon physics, the abuser is sucked into a Black Hole Vortex of Justice(tm)
Step 3: Um, profit.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
I wonder if you can get around this by just using a calling card and going through another 800 number. There are lots of times I have to return a call (work) to people that I don't want to have my cell number. I know you could just find another phone, but going through a calling card might be easier lots of times.
As far as the domestic violence stuff...I can see it cutting both ways because this makes it easier to document who is making those harassign phone calls and put them back in jail.
Caller ID is not and never has been a reliable way of determining the origin of a call (either the number, the person, or even the location).
Caller ID 'blocking' is not and never has been a reliable way of hiding the origin of a phone call (either the number, the person, or the location).
Knowing a phone number at which you can reach a particular person or organization (or from which they placed a call to you), does not necessarily tell you anything about their location.
Prior to cell phones and the Internet, a number could certainly give you a general idea as to the state/city/county/etc where a given line was located. If it was the public number of a business or organization, you could often find that information.
Enter cellphones - all you could tell was the general location of the address of the person that opened the cell account. Given the mobile nature of a cell, only the cell company would be able to have any idea as to the actual location of the person/phone, and only when it was turned on.
Enter the Internet - previously, if you knew a name, and that person has a listed number, you could find it. Once that database became available electronically, it was a simple matter to sort (or search) by the number, making the reverse true. You might get just a name, you might get an address. Again, only if its 'listed'. Now there are companies that (for a fee) claim to be able to do lookups for unlisted numbers as well.
Enter VoIP - all bets are off. You can be in NY and get a CA number. You can sign up in TX, have the service there, and you can take your ATA on a roadtrip to FL, plug it into your cousin's Internet, and when you call it will still show your TX phone number as the origin of the call (either directly or via this 800-forwarding silliness) There are even cheap services that let you make outbound calls to the PSTN, without even having an actual line or number - they either send no caller ID, or a number from one of their pools, which could be anywhere, even dozens of states away.
Solution for 'women's shelters': The residents chip in together and get a basic prepaid cellphone. This could be done with coordination of the staff, or without. No name or address ever gets associated with the number. The residents share it to make calls to anyone to whom they do not want to reveal their location. They let the cell's callerID show up, but they turn off the ringer, or block all inbound calls so they go to voicemail. Instruct their 'abusive' husbands that they are sharing a phone and that they must leave a voicemail to reach them, which must state who they are and who they are calling. This also leaves the 'abusive' husband a means to reach his ex, but without knowing where she is.
Solutions for 'people who want to know is calling' - lowtech: screen with an answering machine - hightech - answer if you recognize caller ID, i there is none or you don't recognize it,let it go to voicemail (It is possible for someone you want to talk to to call from a number you don't recognize, or from somewhere that provides no caller id - maybe your bank's antifraud dept is calling you to verify a transaction)
Notwithstanding the right of an adult (including a battered spouse) to withhold their location from another adult (such as the spouse doing the battering,) both parents of a child have the right to know where the *child* is living, until and unless a court says otherwise.
The need for domestic violence victims is to hide where they are. They might be staying with a relative. They might be staying with a friend. They might be staying at a shelter. By using the landline phone to call their abusive partner, they reveal where they are located. The solution is to use a pre-paid cellphone. It can be blocked because it is the same number. But it doesn't reveal the location of the caller (at least not yet).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This is old technology and will not work if the caller uses VoIP. See this explanation: http://blog.roychowdhury.org/2009/02/18/trapcall-old-wine-in-a-new-bottle-caller-id-unblocking-is-not-voodo/
If it bothers you so much to get CID blocked calls, why not just reject calls that are blocking their callerid info? I know this is easily possible with vonage, and assume it is the same with pretty much any carrier. If the person really needs to get in touch with you, they'll get the message and knock off the bullshit. Otherwise, you'll never need deal with getting the call in the first place.
A battered wife may need to talk to a relative...
Recognizing that most Slashdotters have not been in relationships it might be appropriate to point out that not all battering victims are female. There are plenty of violent women in this society beyond the occasional crazy female astronaut who drives cross country in diapers.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
Gizmo5.com allows you to pay $4 a year to set your caller ID to whatever you want on outgoing calls, else it's whatever your last call-in number purchased was. I'm a US resident but my last call-in number I got from them was a UK number so every call I make has a caller ID that shows the UK country code and the rest of the numbers. People in U.S. have no clue what that mess of numbers mean and I doubt telemarketers are going to call a UK number to reach me, and if they do they are going to have to navigate my telemarketer-annoyance dialplan in Asterisk.
OK, not for everyone but hey, this is a site for nerds, remember?!
Says something to that effect, and spoof card's "inexpensive" service has the following costs:
$10.00 (60 Minutes) $20.00 (120 Minutes)
$40.00 (240 Minutes) $80.00 (480 Minutes)
SHIP ME A PHYSICAL CARD ($4.99)
Methinks there may be a lawsuit in the near future if the only way to bypass this without geting a throw-away phone is to pay for their service.
Ok, I think the question here is, what did the broad do in the first place to get beaten. Surely she must have deserved it.
Obvious solution, if your man tells you to do something then do it. If he has to tell you a second time then you need a lesson taught to you for not listening the first time.
Has a guy ever hit a woman for no reason at all unless he was on drugs? No. And if a guy is on drugs then the wife must have played a role in it and probably does drugs too.
This company is staffed by some pretty entrepreneurial people, obviously. They're playing both ends against each other and profiting from both. Frankly, too many telecom companies, like my own Pacific Bell/SBC/AT&T, have been profiting ENORMOUSLY as well from a feature that costs them virtually nothing to provide in a digital network... kinda like text messaging, eh?
No one who voluntarily chooses to call me has any right to anonymity. If I have a right to "face my accuser" in court, I damned well have a right to know who's calling me. Would you choose to answer the door if the person knocking was wearing a mask or a burlap sack over his head? Why should the telephone paradigm be treated any differently than that, merely because the technology allows it?
Caller ID *should* have been mandatory for all callers and FREE, right from the start. Had that been the case, this company wouldn't even exist to profit from our stupid choices about it.
The person making the phone call always knows 2 things: 1) The number they're calling from; 2) The number they're calling to.
Why shouldn't the person on the other end of the call be entitled to the same information? After all, the person making the call isn't required to do so if they truly don't want to - court orders not withstanding.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Q : What do all battered women have in common ?
A : They JUST didn't listen.
Surely it must be possible to create a system that acts as a proxy for phonecalls? [...]
Does this kinda thing exist already?
My AT&T prepaid phone card works this way. Calls through it show up at the other end as one of its servers.
Hmm... it got modded off topic but it is clearly not off topic.... incidentally, that from 1997...
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I dont see how this can work anyway.
If A - The victim calls B - the abuser, and B forwards his phone to a toll free number (C) , the ANI number displayed is B, NOT A. This is because the call that C, the toll free customer is paying for is the one from B to C, NOT the one from A.
The Toll Free Customer (C) would see an incomming call to them from B, and all the Caller ID rule says is that the receiver of a toll free call has the right to receive the same number information in real time that appears on the bill. This is often delivered to caller-id devices, but is actually ANI, and in this case B's ANI is what would be displayed, because that is the call that C is paying for.
It has to be this way. Just as an extreme example, what happens if A calls B from one of those expensive foreign locations? C does not get charged from that foreign location, but only for the call from B to C. Therefore under the FCC rules, only B's number should be provided, never A's. If they are providing A's number, they are clearly violating FCC blocking rules and will likely be shut down soon..
AFAIC = As Far As I'm Concerned.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
So far I only read about how you can use this to unblock somebody calling your cell phone, how do you implement it on somebody calling your land line with caller ID?
How does it handle situations where the caller ID info is not transmitted by the switch? (if the call is coming from overseas or from some rural place)
Yeah, it's not actually Caller ID that's being presented here. It's ANI. They are two separate and distinct things. ANI is provided by the carrier to toll-free customers. It is much harder to "spoof" ANI than Caller ID. Also, using ANI will defeat a spoofed caller ID.
If you need to make an anonymous call you could also use http://pranklyspeaking.com/ to change your callerid and voice. This way TrapCall can't unmask your real number
the scam is....
there is no spoon.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Spoofcard is not the first to offer private call unmasking. Tom Keating had an article on his VOIP blog back in '07 about a company called The Zero Group that was doing the same thing http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/voip/private-caller-hack.asp