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Programmer Develops Phone Bot To Target Windows Support Scammers (onthewire.io)
Trailrunner7 quotes a report from On the Wire: The man who developed a bot that frustrates and annoys robocallers is planning to take on the infamous Windows support scam callers head-on. Roger Anderson last year debuted his Jolly Roger bot, a system that intercepts robocalls and puts the caller into a never-ending loop of pre-recorded phrases designed to waste their time. Anderson built the system as a way to protect his own landlines from annoying telemarketers and it worked so well that he later expanded it into a service for both consumers and businesses. Users can send telemarketing calls to the Jolly Roger bot and listen in while it chats inanely with the caller. Now, Anderson is targeting the huge business that is the Windows fake support scam. This one takes a variety of forms, often with a pre-recorded message informing the victim that technicians have detected that his computer has a virus and that he will be connected to a Windows support specialist to help fix it. The callers have no affiliation with Microsoft and no way of detecting any malware on a target's machine. It's just a scare tactic to intimidate victims into paying a fee to remove the nonexistent malware, and sometimes the scammers get victims to install other unwanted apps on their PCs, as well. Anderson plans to turn the tables on these scammers and unleash his bots on their call centers. "I'm getting ready for a major initiative to shut down Windows Support. It's like wack-a-mole, but I'm getting close to going nuclear on them. As fast as you can report fake 'you have a virus call this number now' messages to me, I will be able to hit them with thousands of calls from bots," Andrew said in a post Tuesday.
How is this even legal? It is a crime to waste the money of corporations. Maybe some of these tech support companies will put him in prison or send someone to physically harm him.
Hi, this is Lenny!! Come again?
Impractical for those who are job hunting, or those who are a major contact in some community organization (such as for a church, community group, etc.)
Go read how it works. You transfer crap calls to one of the robots and it talks to them for you. It now works with sip, so I added an extension on my pbx to transfer it to them. It emails you the recording but I also record it on my pbx.
Vigilante justice has never been funnier.
When your scam relies upon a script, it is easy to script a response that falls within the norms of what you're expecting out of your victims.
Queue the robot that checks the "I am not a robot" check box ... because it can.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The summery says " 'you have a virus call this number now' messages" so it sounds like they are giving out a real number they expect the victims to call.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
I just use a Google Voice number for that. Cuts down on a lot of obvious scams, is easy to report numbers that make their way through, plus the numbers are tied to the email address I use for said group.
Jesus, we're a community of nerds - MOST of us are required to answer our personal phones and we don't always have the luxury of having everyone's contact information in our address book.
And for Mr. "this is illegal!" above, what these assholes are doing is illegal to. Put me in the same fucking cell and I'll teach them a lesson the courts aren't allowed to teach.
Typical... Scammers just provide spoofed data for the caller ID. Apart from having the right kind of trunk connection with ma bell (pretty much anything except a POTS line) you can set up the caller to receive just about ANY number. I had our PBX operator show me how once. He knew the White House switch board number so he used that to set up the PBX and called my cell phone. Voilà, I got a call from the White House! Great to amaze your friends or hide your true identity from the hapless person you want to abuse who depends on the caller ID.
Of course, none of this slight of hand actually keeps the Phone Company from knowing who to charge or from telling law enforcement who you are if presented the proper warrant....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I was doing this 10 years ago with Asterisk phone server. get a phone call at the house, press *1 and it transfers them to telemarketer hell where it plays random human responses that are a lot better than his as I was looking for pauses in audio to respond, his is just random audio that is not responding to the audio coming in.
There was a asterisk guru that published all the goodies on how to do this over a decade ago and I used his code and modified it a bit. worked great and the longest I tired up a telemarketer was 2 hours.
about 4 years ago someone had a better one called "this is lenny" that emulated an old senile man and was recording the calls for everyones entertainment.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As someone who runs the IT department at a retail establishment where half of our orders are placed via phone calls, it would be near impossible to just "not answer" the phone. Not every entity has this luxury. Though, I do personally have the luxury of fucking with all these "tech support" callers every time they contact us!
Sometimes the ANI isn't what you send for the Caller ID data. It's like the difference between E-mail "from" and "Reply TO" headers.
There ARE valid reasons to do this slight of hand, so the phone company usually allows it from PBX operators.... At least the ones who don't abuse the privilege...
I'm sure that part of this SS7 ISUP signaling protocol is mirrored in SIP, but I left the Telco world right when SIP was getting started so I'm not well versed in the various protocols used to handle signaling in the SIP world.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Bullshit. They know. Once they know you have found them out they invariably start cursing at you and being rude. Don't be so fucking naiive.
This will discover if the telemarketers are really intelligent and self-aware.
I usually use my local FBI Field office number when I'm testing a new system I setup. There's next to no controls on CID reporting on any voip provider.