First telephone scam of the year!

[Dave Plowman (News]

Love it. ;-)

[John Rumm]

I actually find the TPS is quite effective - it stopped most of the UK calls, and I almost never get any like the above. Had an Indian BT disconnection one twice today though.

[newshound]

I did manage to distract the monkey (while enjoying a coffee and biscuit) "the trouble is, you are upsetting BT's servers" for long enough for her to call her supervisor, whom I strung along for a further five minutes until I got bored.

I've had about five such calls on my mobile in the past week. Usually they only come through on the land line. All spoofing different UK numbers.

[Mike Humphrey]

Actually there's one case that can happen - if someone sends your landline a text message. Then you'll get a call, apparently from your own number, and a robot will read you the text message.

Mike

[Chris Green]

Only if something is configured to do that. Our landline can receive SMS and displays the text on the handsets, some senders recognise this, others don't.

[tim...]

they have a new MO of using the number of the most recent person who they called, so that

a) the are completely random so you can't usefully block them

b) they look like they are in the UK

[tim...]

That's a scammer

they are never going to obey TPS requirements

[Dave Plowman (News]

Just block every number you don't know.

[Robin]

How does that work for, by way of example, those who care enough about some people to want to hear from the hospital, police etc if they are desperately ill or in distress?

[John Rumm]

No shit. really?

Kind of the point of the illustration above.

[John Rumm]

What are the other menu options OOI?

[John Rumm]

Alas all of that that is too old school to have any viability these days.

Scammers don't get telephone lines installed, or open landline accounts. They buy bulk packages of call time from VoIP providers. They program the software to use any caller ID they want (regardless of whether its a real number, or "their" number, or someone else's). All their calls are made from "soft" phones on their computer systems - connecting via IP - and if they want to be really obscure with a VPN to hide their actual location.

If you can work out what their scam is, and identify who the VoIP provider is (not something you can do on the receiving end), *then* you may be able to contact the provider and get them to close the account. However even that is only a very minor stumbling block for them, since they only precharge each account with a couple of hundred dollars worth of calls at a time. If they lose access to the account they just open another.

To reliably take down these organisations you need to gain inside access to their systems - and that typically means using slightly questionable techniques (verging on "black hat") to do.

Well worth watching (or listening to) some of the youtube videos put up by Jim Browning. He manages to gain intimate access to the networks of many scammers, and quite often identify all the key players, and the way the calls are routed, and how the money laundered. He then passes that to the relevant Indian authorities who usually appear to ignore it! (save for the occasional big win - a recent joint investigation with BBC's Panorama being a good one)

Some of his best interventions included changing the scammers outgoing pre-recorded announcement to warn any one receiving it about telephone scams! They could not understand why no one was responding to their calls any more. Each time they got suspicious and contacted the consultant who set up the voip / robo calling system for them, he swapped it back to the real message for a bit. Also he change the rate of calls made by the robo caller to burn through their call budget much faster than they could actually answer the calls.

[alan_m]

The popular call blocking phones on land lines don't just drop the call. There is an outing message informing the caller that to get through they have to give their name and the hash key has to be pressed. The phone then rings and the when answered the recipient can accept or reject the call. If the call isn't answered the caller can leave a message on the answerphone. Scammers and cold calling sales tend to hang up immediately on hearing a recorded outgoing message. Scammers who use automated recorded messages find that the they cannot get through because no hash key is pressed.

However, blocking all unknown numbers may not be wise if the land line is required for receiving automated card fraud calls from the bank or you have designated the land line number for the extra security check on internet transactions. You are unlikely to know beforehand from which number the call originates.

The legitimate fraud call I've received are an automated messages that require answers "Press 1, 2, 3 or 4 if your date of birth is ABC, DEF, GHI, JKL" "Press 1, 2, 3 or 4 if the amount of your last transaction was abc, def, ghi, jkl" "Did you authorise a payment of XYZ yesterday, press 1 for YES, 2 for No" Depending on the answer, no more action is required or instructed to contact the card supplier. The security question options may be different on different calls.

These days some of the telecom providers provide a blocking service for numbers that have been identified as scam. This probably relies on the same calling number being used hence now spoofing different numbers each time.

[John Rumm]

You would be unlikely to be able to trace the originating system necessarily, but could probably identify where a call enters the terminating system. So for example, where the call comes into the openreach network. However that might be a peering / gateway arrangment that serves thousands of voip handlers.

When calls are routed through the networks of traditional circuit switched providers, then yes there is some. When the bulk of the call is handled on the internet, and only presents to the POTS network at the very last minute, most of the call routing information is not available (or even that meaningful at that point)

Ultimately, if you could trace as far back as to the VoIP provider who allowed the call to be injected, you might with adequate legal pressure in the appropriate country be able to get the details registered against the account. Assuming they are even real, you would then need to try and trace those back.

There are many technical challenges to overcome, and you will be working with various levels of co-operation and interest from multiple "partners" along the way.

Also recognise that they might run a campaign of calls using many different providers - so the actual volume of calls on any single one may be quite small.

Yes... and even if using "invented" numbers they are likely to end up spoofing real numbers by coincidence in the process.

(the more scrupulous VoIP providers may put some effort into ensuring the numbers you present are actually yours)

[Bob Eager]

One is a long one that leads telemarketers on, after making them wait because "all members of the household are dealing with other telemarketers", another is some rubbish about winning holidays. The last one actually gets you through but only genuine callers seem to get that far.

[Dave Plowman (News]

You have a method for a genuine caller to get through. Scammers won't be bothered.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Most such things call my mobile and often text. And I don't get any scam calls on that - just the landline.

[alan_m]

+1 It's my landline that I get all the scam calls. My mobile number seems to be scam free.

[mm0fmf]

ITYF the termination fees for the originating network are greater to mobiles than landlines so the scum go for the cheaper numbers.

[mm0fmf]

Ofcom can now fine UK marketing companies up to £2m and that has grabbed their attention. They may go bankrupt and avoid the fine but it can have a bad effect on the people trying to run businesses in the UK if you have enough judgements against you.

There's little that can be done for calls from outside the UK.