TTY phone fraud and abuse
Sean Donelan
sean at donelan.com
Sun Apr 11 04:31:15 UTC 2004
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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