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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical TTY phone fraud and abuse
On Sat, 10 Apr 2004, Scott Call wrote: > While both the Telco and ISP are communications services, they are > completely different beasts in the abuse department (as well as support, > provisioning, billing, etc) http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailystar/17393.php Overseas scam artists have hijacked a telephone relay system for deaf people and turned phone operators in Tucson and nationwide into full-time facilitators of fraud. Operators at Tucson's Communication Service for the Deaf call center used to spend their shifts helping hearing- and speech-impaired Americans make calls. But since January their workdays are dominated by Internet calls from Nigeria and elsewhere. The callers try to use stolen credit-card numbers to make big purchases of merchandise from American companies. The operators often suspect fraud, but they can't just hang up. Federal rules require them to make the calls and keep the contents strictly confidential. [...] Spokesmen for Sprint, AT&T and Hamilton Telecommunications said the companies are aware of the fraudulent use of their services. But they said it's impossible to know what percentage of their Internet-relay calls are fraudulent, because the calls are confidential. They said they're working with the FCC to resolve the problem. "We're watching it, we're monitoring it, but privacy is key, and no records are kept," said Roberto Cruz, a spokesman for AT&T.
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