[69451] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: TTY phone fraud and abuse
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Sprunk)
Sun Apr 11 23:24:15 2004
From: "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen@sprunk.org>
To: "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <suresh@outblaze.com>,
"Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@research.att.com>
Cc: "Sean Donelan" <sean@donelan.com>,
"Scott Call" <scall@devolution.com>, <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 22:06:36 -0500
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Thus spake "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <suresh@outblaze.com>
> There is another class of people who route calls out from the USA to
> India (or elsewhere) using VOIP, terminate the calls at an unauthorized
> (that is, not run by a licensed telco) exchange in india, and then route
> the calls out through the local pstn or mobile network.
>
> Quite a few of the "call $asian_country for cheap" phone cards you find
> at ethnic grocery stores seem to work on these lines.
>
> The local telco doesn't see a red cent of any settlement charges when
> this happens. Local telcos are, of course, all against this, and use
> any and every excuse to get these exchanges busted - a procedure that
> typically involves having the local police raid the exchange.
One method that makes raids difficult is that the landing site for these
calls is often a satellite dish (for the international side) combined with
GSM phones (for the local side). Sure, you can cut off the GSM phones
one-by-one, but new ones are cheap enough that it's like a game of
whack-a-mole.
S
Stephen Sprunk "Stupid people surround themselves with smart
CCIE #3723 people. Smart people surround themselves with
K5SSS smart people who disagree with them." --Aaron Sorkin
