Why Phone Fraud Starts with a Silent Call

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/24/434313813/why-phone-fraud-starts-with-a-silent-call

by joe5150 • 11 years ago

69 55 11 years ago

Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1 has a fantastic feature for weird numbers that immediately hang up. Mostly those are call centers, though, and not fraudsters, at least in my experience.

When you select the suspicious number from the call list you get a menu, on which you can block the number.

It's very straight forward and savers me a lot of having to deal with impertinent assholes.

andrewaylett• 11 years ago

That really helps when it's the same number trying to call you again and again (and for the record, all of my Android phones have had the same feature). Unfortunately, here in the UK it's my landline that gets called (which doesn't have that feature) and almost always from a withheld or international number, which means I can't block just that caller anyway.

kbart2• 11 years ago

I'm not sure about stock Android, but on Cyanogenmod you can block calls from unknown numbers (not present on your contact list) or even block using wildcards. Extremely useful feature for my spam phone.

antimagic• 11 years ago

I kind of feel like saying "don't use landlines then dummy!" I mean it's a bit glib, but in all seriousness, why would you use landlines these days for telephone calls? Maybe it's different in the UK, but certainly here in France even the most basic phone plans come with pretty much unlimited domestic calls making the low-tech problems associated with landline phones just not worth the hassle anymore.

4lun• 11 years ago

I have the same issue, but on my mobile. Same message every time "We've been trying to contact you regarding mis-sold PPI.." but different number.

Originally it was from a range of UK mobile numbers, but now it seems to all be foreign numbers so I guess the mobile operators picked up on it. Not really anyway to block it, but at least when it's an unknown foreign number I can be reasonably sure it's a scam and just reject the call.

joe51505• 11 years ago

You can block callers in recent versions of iOS as well, but I think the majority of people who are going to be subjected to these calls are getting them on their landlines. Blocking numbers at your phone service provider is never so simple.

bediger40004• 11 years ago

never so simple - ha, what an understatement. I've called Verizon over the "Rachel from Cardholder Services" robocalls. The chummy customer "service" rep claimed he'd never heard of anyone with such problems. He was shocked, shocked I say! to learn that robocallers actually send different caller ID numbers, so it's useless to try to block them. This whole robocaller thing is dependent on a lot of different things, all of them due to sluggishness or callousness on the part of service providers and regulators.

orjan• 11 years ago

I use Truecaller[1], so far it has worked great. They crowdsource their blocklist so almost all telemarketers are marked as SPAM on their first call. You can then choose to proceed and take the call or add it to your blocklist.

[1]https://www.truecaller.com/

tempestn• 11 years ago

Man do I hate robocalls. Every few days now I get these, "Since you are a valuable customer of [insert large consumer company here], we would like to reward you with [cash/vacation/whatever]. Please press 1 to accept." So many calls. Wishing for them to get shut down seems overly optimistic, so I hope they just get better at recognizing people who will never fall for their scam and stop wasting resources on those numbers...

(Seriously though, I feel for the real victims, and obviously having your savings disappear is infinitely worse than being annoyed by scam calls every few days. Still annoying though.)

joe51505• 11 years ago

I think as telecom-as-a-service grows and facilitates further and further automation of this kind of thing, we may see the growth of phone call spam filtering the same way we have with email. Of course, telemarketing is nothing new, and so far nobody's really attempted anything like that to my knowledge.

What if any technologies exist for PSTN that are analogous to DKIM or SPF in email?

manishsharan• 11 years ago

This article did not mention spoofed caller id, which is really scary and annoying. Normally I do not pick calls from numbers I do not recognize. With calller id spoofing, the fraudsters are able to show a phone number that is very similar to mine : the first 6 digits are identical to my landline ; this fools me into believing it is a neighbor or my kid' friends that is calling and I end up picking up the phone.

eitally• 11 years ago

It's not just fraudsters. Until recently, I was a reasonably high-up IT leader at a big corporation and I probably received 3-5 cold calls per day from vendors and other service providers. By the past 12 months, almost all of them spoofed my local area code -- this is what finally put me over the top. I no longer answer calls from numbers I don't recognize unless I am expecting one.

jsmeaton• 11 years ago

In Australia that's flat out illegal. You must present a number, and that number has to be connected to your business so that the person receiving the call can call back.

coldpie• 11 years ago

I've been using numbers from Burner to sell stuff on Craigslist, and they actually let you select the area code of the number they assign you. Pretty neat, but it definitely demonstrates the meaninglessness of phone number digits today.

DoggettCK• 11 years ago

I got one that was my exact name and number showing up on caller ID, which should be unlisted. As in, my home phone appeared to be calling itself.

That one pissed me off enough to ask for a supervisor, which caused the guy to immediately hang up.

theandrewbailey• 11 years ago

How hard would it be to add X.509 (or other PKI) capability to caller ID, where the certificates would be 100% managed by the carrier?

jimhefferon2• 11 years ago

Company researchers estimate 1 in every 2,200 calls is a fraud attempt.

This number does not pass the smell test for me. About 2 out of 3 landline calls that I receive are fraud attempts.

pavel_lishin3• 11 years ago

Maybe they're counting cell calls as well? I get maybe one call a month that I would classify as spam.

Also, do you get many calls on your landline, or is it more that you get six calls a month, four of which are spammy?

greggman• 11 years ago

I get almost no legit calls to my cell phone (no land line). So I get percentage-wise a very high number of spam calls. My solution is too add the number to my contact list and mark that contact as silent ring. There's 33 numbers spread across 4 "scam" contacts (a contact can only have 10 numbers). Some of those numbers have called up to 10 times.

Where as if I check my "recent" call list there's been no more than 2 legit calls a month

jimhefferon2• 11 years ago

Also, do you get many calls on your landline, or is it more that you get six calls a month, four of which are spammy?

I'm 56 so I get more calls on my landline than on my cell. :-)

Maybe three calls a day, two on the landline, and of those the great majority of the ones during the day are spam (sometimes a dentist appmt-type call, but typically spam).

tvanantwerp• 11 years ago

With the exception of my wife, 90%+ of calls I receive are fraud attempts.

Asbostos2• 11 years ago

Regarding giving out PIN numbers. Banks should make a better effort at informing customers that no other human should ever know their PIN or internet banking password, not even the bank's staff. As soon as you tell anybody your PIN, that means you're being scammed.

blackoil• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, scanners have evolved, they will tell you same and will forward you to take automated system.

bediger40004• 11 years ago

Everyone should let the robocalls play from start to finish, then press 1 (or whatever) to talk to a live operator. Lie to the operator. Take up as much time as possible, say "ummmm" a lot, ask for the operator's name, insist that you be called "Ed" or something. Take some time to "fumble" for your "credit card". I keep an expired gift card in my wallet to give out to fraudsters. Express "disbelief" when your account doesn't show up at "CitiBank" or whatever. If you have some knowledge of credit card number formats, give out a scrambled card number. I usually end up the call with a few anglo-saxon synonyms for the masculine organ of primogeniture, I reccommend you develop your own abuse technique.

If enough people do this to fraudsters, and the occasional real credit card or bank person, then things will change.

Terr_• 11 years ago

I do a milder version of this: I press the buttons, mute my mic, and leave the phone on the desk. Less work for me, but still costs them a little bit in terms of connecting to the phone of a real person who goes through their intro-spiel.

trentlott• 11 years ago

It would be interesting if there was some audio-based exploit that could be used against the systems in question.

It would depend heavily on the nature of the software and the processing done, I realize. But if only one overly-clever person who wants an inordinate amount of praise and fame can manage it. . .

Why Phone Fraud Starts with a Silent Call

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