Anyone interested in the details of how these scams are pulled off might want to check out "scam baiting" youtube channels like Kitboga [1]. They use a virtual machine and pose as a computer-illiterate person long enough to observe all the techniques. They are also pretty funny sometimes.
I'm astonished by how blatant their techniques are. For example, in the "refund scam", the caller pretends to be offering a refund for some tech support contract. The steps are:
- Get remote desktop access to the victim's PC.
- Tell the victim that they must log into their online banking account to get the refund.
- Use "inspect element" to edit the banking page, making it look like victim got too large of a refund.
- Convince the victim that they can't pay back the difference by another bank transfer, but instead must pay it back in the form of gift cards.
It's outlandish. It goes beyond computer-illiterate victims. The victim needs to have a diminished sense of skepticism, which can come from age-related senility but also cultural unfamiliarity, anxiety, etc.
Unfortunately the comments include a lot of casual racism against Indians, with little awareness of the structural conditions causing these scammers to exist.
>The victim must have severely diminished critical thinking ability for the scam to work.
This is why lists of "elderly owned" phone numbers go for so much on the black/gray market. The cost of running these scams is so low that they spam everyone with their bait, but I suspect the real cash cows are elderly people who have large savings / Social Security checks.
Part of the problem is that it is super difficult to teach a parent or grandparent what inspect element even is without delving deep into Web infrastructure and how browsers work...very complicated, technical explanations. Simplification works to a point, but if you just tell them "don't trust what you see on the screen" they'll ignore actually important warnings, blast through alert boxes faster than they can read them, and when your next lesson includes "look for the green padlock next to each address" they'll just get even more confused since, you know, you just told them not to trust anything.
> The victim must have severely diminished critical thinking ability for the scam to work.
I don't think that's true. It can happen to immigrants to a country who are entirely unaware of banking/legal/taxing practices, etc. who can be scammed into thinking a call is from a legitimate authority figure and who simply do not have enough cultural familiarity to know which things "don't seem right."
About the racist comments: I have engaged these scammers myself and to a person (usually male) they will shout expletives at me once they realize I have wasted their time and I will not be their next victim.
Interestingly enough they all use the same “insult” that they will have relations with my mother (insert relevant expletives). These people are fraudsters preying on older people and do not deserve pity.
I work as a care giver was in washroom with a slightly demented client and the phone rang. She asked me to get it as she could not get up quickly. It was of course Microsoft Support. This lady has never owned a computer and I knew right away scam. I said “you piece of shit scum of the earth” and before I could finish he says “oh shit” and hung up on me. Luckily this lady has no access to credit cards or money but if she did she would be the perfect victim. Easy to fool and no way to tell you how it all happened. I normally act highly professional speaking on other people’s phones but in this instance I knew it was for sure a scam and really hoped by showing I knew exactly what they were they would not waste time calling back.
>>It's outlandish. It goes beyond computer-illiterate victims. The victim must have severely diminished critical thinking ability for the scam to work.
That's the whole point. MS Research actually pointed out that the pitch--full of speeeling mistakes--was designed to attract the less educated /intelligent ones, since smart ones are a waste of time.
> The victim must have severely diminished critical thinking ability for the scam to work.
That's oversimplifying, and insulting, and unsupported.
It's more accurate to say more likely scam victims are more likely risk tolerant. As this study puts it, they see "the potential for high benefits as outweighing the risks."
> Unfortunately the comments include a lot of casual racism against Indians, with little awareness of the structural conditions causing these scammers to exist.
Thank you for this. It's easy to say "they" when referring to a particular race or group of people that happen to be dealt the cards in life such that they end up doing this.
Sadly those who take on this work are many times themselves in an even worse situation and many put their blinders on when scamming others because there's nothing else or left for them.
Jim Browning is another great channel related to this, in that he does his best to infiltrate the callcenters he gets calls from and find the info needed to alert (or even refund!) the victims:
While Kitboga's scambaits are definitely entertaining and a waste of the scammers' time, Jim seems to be doing the work that a police unit should be doing.
I always wonder if that channel is real or fake. I swear I've heard the same scammer more than once and I don't see why the scammers wouldn't check to see if they're running in a VM as soon as they get remote access.
another scam involves getting remote access and then setting the windows password so they have to call another number and pay ransom to get in their own pc, the screen saver text is usually to unlock your pc call xxx-xxx-xxxx
About 10 years ago, I was able to get a scammer to run a malicious Java applet. I just insisted that if they really wanted my money, they were going to have to use this fake bank portal I made.
Wish they'd do something about internet scammers. One of them got my mom to pay $150 and she lives off disability. She asks me all the time about these messages she gets about how her computer is damaged and to call a number. I tell her not to, but she has dementia and forgets. These assholes are preying specifically on our old population.
My parents aren't equipped to deal with the amount of deceit online. They grew up in a different time. For example, my mom went online to buy flowers and didn't realize the top ads on Google are all scams where they overcharge you and forward your order to a real local shop.
Or how about the Marketplace investigation into fake locksmiths in the GTA?
Serious question, from an anxious person whose parents are nearing "that age": Is it normal for a person with dementia to have control of their finances, to the point where they can give large amounts of money away?
There needs to be felony-grade criminal liability for the VOIP providers who are giving the scammers access to the US phone network. It's funny how many things are a serious, unsolvable problem until someone is in danger of being perp walked in front of reporters, at which point it's easily solved.
I don’t know why the US government is entertaining a game of whack-a-mole here. Just make more than X reports per customer per year of connecting scam calls an instant non-trivial fine for the phone service provider, where X is some small value, and let the big telcos figure out how they want to stop it.
I've had 3 separate calls today from the "IRS" about an enforcement action against my social security number. I've been waiting for a very important call from an undetermined number and it's infuriating to keep picking up to hear these stupid scams.
I have downloaded an app called RoboKiller and it has worked well so far. I used to get spam calls from Russia, India and Indonesia at 3 am in the morning and wake me up. After downloading the said app these calls have drastically even though once in a while a spam call gets through.
The DOJ press release [1] mentions that a majority of these calls are coming from India. Does anyone know what the Indian government has done to try to fix the problem? I would assume enforcement should start there.
Why? The US has the prime responsibility for enforcing US laws. And the US also has plenty of control over the calls, because they have to go through US equipment before reaching the phone of a person residing in the US.
I mean if they even took the small step to ensure that these calls do not spoof the caller ID, and appear as coming from India, this would decrease a lot of the scams.
Indian justice system is a joke. Not sure what you could hope for there.
I don't see why this can't be fixed client-side? The vast majority of people don't need to receive calls from overseas, problem solved.
As a former shiftworker who was on call I begged my telco to only allow Australian numbers to my phone, they couldn't do it, despite trying to escalate the issue it was fruitless, all day while I was sleeping I would get phone calls from the Seychelles, Mexico, etc.
Short of MitM'ing all VoIP traffic, how could this be proactively enforced? It's far more practical to focus proactive enforcement where actual phone lines are used, which is exclusively in the U.S.
I repeatedly get scam calls from a fake "Verizon" that show up on my caller ID as Verizon on my Verizon phone. When I call back I end up talking to the REAL Verizon who basically say "oh yeah that thing ... we'll never call you so don't pick up, that's a scam"
If they can't stop someone impersonating their own name/number on their own network, we're all screwed.
If anyone from the iOS team is reading this, it would be so very cathartic if I could select a call from my history and "mark as spam" instead of just "block caller".
I don't see how they can do much to take down the groups making the calls. Where's the negligence lawsuit against the telecom companies allowing it to happen?
> Calls may be traced through these records
back to their gateway carrier, and thus to their foreign source. The telecommunications industry
refers to this tracing process as "traceback."
Gee I am glad there is a presidential election coming up so that they are actually dealing with this. For the last several years robocalls have gotten so bad that I have stopped answering my phone for numbers that are not in my address book and now I have to ask anyone that is planning to call me for their phone number so that I know to answer.
And these have been illegal the entire time. It is not like they had to pass any laws about it or anything. They just had to get off their buts and enforce the laws.
Here's one telecom complaining to one of the defendants:
> “These types of scam calls are prohibited from our network and further fraudulent calls from the same customer account will result in termination of said customer account. The number of 844-xxx-xxx has been removed from your account in order to protect the integrity of our network"
Sooo, it sounds like getting caught with spam calls doesn't even result in a ban....
> organization sent an additional 6 emails... notifying him... the Resp Org was removing eight additional... numbers from the accounts of two TollFreeDeals customers
Ugh. No wonder these have been going on for years.
I'm interested in opinions on why only these companies have been targeted. Would not the US carriers too have been instructed to block calls from the identified sources? It seems inconceivable that the US carriers can reliably receive payment for the calls but unable to refuse them. I feel that if these were political robocalls originating from offshore rather than financial scams that this would have been addressed far sooner.
Kudos for doing something though. I expect a surge over here if scamming the US becomes non-profitable.
is there some better way to break apart the criminal gangs that do this? how about offering large bounties for turning your confederates in? this might be an annex to the racketeering laws where you get immunity and a huge payday for ratting out your co-racketeers.
complexity is working against us right now. criminals have 193 national jurisdictions to move around and hide in. better to give them the complex task of maintaining 100% loyalty among their ranks at all times.
I've been presented with several offers over the last year to renew my car's warranty as it's expiring soon.
I don't own a car nor have a driver's license.
I usually get through to a person then ask them which of my many cars is expiring. Somehow they never know, and just keep asking me for the make and model of my car.
Maybe I should look up some really obscure model to further troll with?
Would passing a legislation which requires these gateway carriers to verify the billing addresses of their customers through their banks(IRS scammers) force these companies to filter out most of them ?
[+] [-] blt|6 years ago|reply
I'm astonished by how blatant their techniques are. For example, in the "refund scam", the caller pretends to be offering a refund for some tech support contract. The steps are:
- Get remote desktop access to the victim's PC.
- Tell the victim that they must log into their online banking account to get the refund.
- Use "inspect element" to edit the banking page, making it look like victim got too large of a refund.
- Convince the victim that they can't pay back the difference by another bank transfer, but instead must pay it back in the form of gift cards.
It's outlandish. It goes beyond computer-illiterate victims. The victim needs to have a diminished sense of skepticism, which can come from age-related senility but also cultural unfamiliarity, anxiety, etc.
Unfortunately the comments include a lot of casual racism against Indians, with little awareness of the structural conditions causing these scammers to exist.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm22FAXZMw1BaWeFszZxUKw
[+] [-] nexuist|6 years ago|reply
This is why lists of "elderly owned" phone numbers go for so much on the black/gray market. The cost of running these scams is so low that they spam everyone with their bait, but I suspect the real cash cows are elderly people who have large savings / Social Security checks.
Part of the problem is that it is super difficult to teach a parent or grandparent what inspect element even is without delving deep into Web infrastructure and how browsers work...very complicated, technical explanations. Simplification works to a point, but if you just tell them "don't trust what you see on the screen" they'll ignore actually important warnings, blast through alert boxes faster than they can read them, and when your next lesson includes "look for the green padlock next to each address" they'll just get even more confused since, you know, you just told them not to trust anything.
[+] [-] baddox|6 years ago|reply
I don't think that's true. It can happen to immigrants to a country who are entirely unaware of banking/legal/taxing practices, etc. who can be scammed into thinking a call is from a legitimate authority figure and who simply do not have enough cultural familiarity to know which things "don't seem right."
[+] [-] ipython|6 years ago|reply
Interestingly enough they all use the same “insult” that they will have relations with my mother (insert relevant expletives). These people are fraudsters preying on older people and do not deserve pity.
[+] [-] 14|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onetimemanytime|6 years ago|reply
That's the whole point. MS Research actually pointed out that the pitch--full of speeeling mistakes--was designed to attract the less educated /intelligent ones, since smart ones are a waste of time.
[+] [-] hi41|6 years ago|reply
What are the structural conditions you are referring to.
[+] [-] tantalor|6 years ago|reply
That's oversimplifying, and insulting, and unsupported.
It's more accurate to say more likely scam victims are more likely risk tolerant. As this study puts it, they see "the potential for high benefits as outweighing the risks."
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180727-why-so-many-pe...
They overestimate the benefits or underestimate the risks of scam offers.
[+] [-] lozaning|6 years ago|reply
If I ever get calls like this I'll keep them on the line as long as I can as a kind of game. I get called like maybe once a quarter though.
[+] [-] ct0|6 years ago|reply
Global Voicecom Inc - 1 (516) 342-5894
Global Telecommunication Services Inc - (516)-327-4681
K S Telecom Inc. - (916) 652-4735
[+] [-] irjustin|6 years ago|reply
Thank you for this. It's easy to say "they" when referring to a particular race or group of people that happen to be dealt the cards in life such that they end up doing this.
Sadly those who take on this work are many times themselves in an even worse situation and many put their blinders on when scamming others because there's nothing else or left for them.
[+] [-] GenericsMotors|6 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw
While Kitboga's scambaits are definitely entertaining and a waste of the scammers' time, Jim seems to be doing the work that a police unit should be doing.
[+] [-] donmcronald|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apostacy|6 years ago|reply
Greed is a powerful motivator.
[+] [-] auiya|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjs278|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] legohead|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donmcronald|6 years ago|reply
Or how about the Marketplace investigation into fake locksmiths in the GTA?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/locksmith-google-maps-reviews...
Fake ads for fake businesses with fake products and fake reviews. Go internet!
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smn1234|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stronglikedan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mullingitover|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baroomba|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e40|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeyouse|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] behringer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hi41|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronchall|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] president|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-files-acti...
[+] [-] hristov|6 years ago|reply
I mean if they even took the small step to ensure that these calls do not spoof the caller ID, and appear as coming from India, this would decrease a lot of the scams.
[+] [-] ShorsHammer|6 years ago|reply
I don't see why this can't be fixed client-side? The vast majority of people don't need to receive calls from overseas, problem solved.
As a former shiftworker who was on call I begged my telco to only allow Australian numbers to my phone, they couldn't do it, despite trying to escalate the issue it was fruitless, all day while I was sleeping I would get phone calls from the Seychelles, Mexico, etc.
It's utterly frustrating to deal with.
[+] [-] greglindahl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diebeforei485|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Causality1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] habosa|6 years ago|reply
If they can't stop someone impersonating their own name/number on their own network, we're all screwed.
[+] [-] hinkley|6 years ago|reply
Please and thank you.
[+] [-] _bxg1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pknopf|6 years ago|reply
I call bullshit. The communications company are making money and turning a blind eye.
Imagine being an engineer, building a communication network, and not knowing who the hell is on it.
My phone is flooded with these garbage calls. I can't be the only one.
America is drowning.
Someone please fix this shit.
[+] [-] Scoundreller|6 years ago|reply
> Calls may be traced through these records back to their gateway carrier, and thus to their foreign source. The telecommunications industry refers to this tracing process as "traceback."
Pg. 10: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1240031/downl...
But I thought industry had constantly been telling us that they can't figure out where these calls are coming from, so they couldn't stop them...
[+] [-] hristov|6 years ago|reply
And these have been illegal the entire time. It is not like they had to pass any laws about it or anything. They just had to get off their buts and enforce the laws.
[+] [-] Scoundreller|6 years ago|reply
Here's one telecom complaining to one of the defendants:
> “These types of scam calls are prohibited from our network and further fraudulent calls from the same customer account will result in termination of said customer account. The number of 844-xxx-xxx has been removed from your account in order to protect the integrity of our network"
Sooo, it sounds like getting caught with spam calls doesn't even result in a ban....
> organization sent an additional 6 emails... notifying him... the Resp Org was removing eight additional... numbers from the accounts of two TollFreeDeals customers
Ugh. No wonder these have been going on for years.
[+] [-] stubish|6 years ago|reply
Kudos for doing something though. I expect a surge over here if scamming the US becomes non-profitable.
[+] [-] mmhsieh|6 years ago|reply
complexity is working against us right now. criminals have 193 national jurisdictions to move around and hide in. better to give them the complex task of maintaining 100% loyalty among their ranks at all times.
[+] [-] ikeboy|6 years ago|reply
I don't own a car nor have a driver's license.
I usually get through to a person then ask them which of my many cars is expiring. Somehow they never know, and just keep asking me for the make and model of my car.
Maybe I should look up some really obscure model to further troll with?
[+] [-] joering2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hello71|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ycombonator|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] munk-a|6 years ago|reply
> The Justice Department said calls facilitated by “gateway carriers” [...]
as a bit concerning for all the easily accessible VOIP entry points to the phone system that aren't currently run by one of the big Telcos?
[+] [-] ycombonator|6 years ago|reply