Caller ID Falsification Service

Dan writes " A US website will offer Caller ID falsification service...Slated for launch this week, Star38.com would offer subscribers a simple Web interface to a Caller ID spoofing system that lets them appear to be calling from any number they choose. [...] SecurityFocus took the site for a test drive, and found it worked as advertised. The user fills out a simple Web form with his phone number, the number he wants to call, and the number he wants to appear to be calling from. Within two seconds, the system rings back, and patches the user through to the destination. The recipient sees only the spoofed number displayed on Caller ID. Any number works, from nonsense phone numbers like "123 4567" to the number for the White House switchboard."

Sooner or Later...

[romper]

"Mr. President, you have a call from the Pope."

Slashdot Comment Author Falsification Service

[Anonymous Coward]

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Author falsification starts at a mere 10,000 subscription points [slashdot.org]!

Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Caller ID Spoofs YOU! (FP)

Courthouse

[Nate Fox]

I knew a friend who worked in a courthouse, and she'd call me from the phone in there.

The caller id was [phone]. Always thought that was kinda cool.

Excellent...

[keiferb]

Anyone have Darl's phone number?

Re:Courthouse

[lucabrasi999]

Imposter! A female friend? Surely you can't be a slashdotter! You must be spoofing that user id.

Seems useless to me.

[Sans_A_Cause]

Unless they figure out who all my friends and family members are. I don't answer the phone if I don't recognize the number. My current phone number is one digit off from the local KFC, so I get a half-dozen calls every day that I don't answer.

Hampering communication....

[mercury83]

The more advanced and complex our communication systems get the more confusing and time-consuming and frustrating it becomes to communicate. It's odd how many people I know that will send emails to people, or chat online, but barely talk to people in person -- or at least with any real depth. The more "advanced" our communication, the more time we spend dealing with all the problems of communication that crop up (spam, caller id spoofing, junk mail, etc.)

I know this whole group of people who are barely seen by other people and do nothing but communicate with random people from all over the world on a website [slashdot.org].

Oh wait... damn ... nevermind

Re:Yummy

[SoulPatch]

Jenny loves anchovies... call anytime 867-5309

Re:Sooner or Later...

[mrtroy]

Haha....reminds me of family guy....

[peter] Free Tibet? I will take it! (at a protest)

*runs to a pay phone*

[peter] Hello China? I think I have something you want...but its going to cost you

[peter] Yes...ALL of the tea.

Re:Dept colection? Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear god, BUY A DICTIONARY!!!

Re:Sooner or Later...

[MikeMacK]

"Mr. President, you have a call from the Pope."

"Well tell him I already talked to God..."

Re:Courthouse

[paiute]

The caller id was [phone]. Always thought that was kinda cool.

So - just for variety - we now slashdot a land line.

Re:Seems useless to me.

[commodoresloat]

Who the hell calls KFC? IIRC, they don't deliver or take orders over the phone. It's fast food, what are you going to ask them? Hey, you guys have any chicken today?

Actually, you could have a lot of fun answering some of those calls and playing games with the callers. "I'm sorry, Sir, we're out of chicken today. No, our other stores are out of chicken too. In fact, we're under new ownership, and will feature an all vegetarian menu. Thank you for calling Kentucky Fried Tofu."

Account Signup

[RalphBinaca]

Star38.com claims it will screen subscribers, and initially make the service available only to licensed private investigators and collection agencies.

I'll pay someone $10 who has an account so I can call the service and sign up as Ralph's Collection Agency. (or do they know better than to rely on Caller-ID for indentifying new accounts?)

Amazing, what's next

[MobyDisk]

People being able to spoof email addresses? Or fake the return address on an envelope? Or print fake IDs! Oh no, club owners beware, that young looking 46 year old might really be 13! And that official looking envelope may not really be from that swiss bank in Europe. And yes, [e-mail] might really be your wife!

Won't work on me

[dfn5]

My phone blocks all callerIDs that are not PGP signed.

Re:Sooner or Later...

[bugnuts]

"Oh, uh... do we have someone that can translate Vatican?"

Testing, one two three

[sysadmn]

Is anyone else really, really tempted to call someone and have this service send the number you're calling? Especially if you've got a friend with the Voice Announce caller-id feature? "Five Five Five One Six Zero Zero" "Hmm, that number seems familar" "Get out of the house, he's in there with you!"

Or Perhaps...

[gillbates]

They should just change their names...

It just so happens that I share a first name, last name, and middle initial with a convicted felon. Debt collectors and private investigators can't tell from a phone listing that I'm not the same person.

At one point, my house would get several calls a week from debt collectors and private investigators. They would impersonate police officers, threaten legal action, etc...

It became really annoying. Finally, itcame down to this:

• I have a habit of answering the phone in a jovial manner, i.e., with phrases like, "Mort's morgue, you stab 'em, we slab 'em...." Generally speaking, I only get calls from close family, so everyone's in on the joke.
• But one time, I decided to answer "Dominoes Pizza, how may I help you..."
• And the reply was not whom I expected, but the voice of our least-favorite sheriff impersonator. Yes, it was the collection agency. But to my surprise, he played along:
• "Dominoes pizza, eh... I'd like a large pepperoni pizza.."
• Well, I continued to take his order, address, phone number and all. I thanked him and then hung up.
• Turns out, he was across the state in a major city. Still not a problem, though. I looked up the phone number for the local Dominoes, and relayed his order.
• Forty five minutes later, I got a call, "Very funny, wise guy..."
• To which I replied, "Dominoes pizza, may I take your order?"

That was the last time he called.

Re:Sooner or Later...

[Penguin]

The difference between the president and God is that God doesn't think he is the president.

Any name I want, eh?

[192939495969798999]

So how many times can you fit "boobs" in the space of a caller ID name display?

Re:ICLID, ANI, name lookup, tephone cumpnies etc.

[mwood]

Sounds to me like this has both public-safety and national-security implications. Shut them down.

Re:Sooner or Later...

[Anonymous Coward]

By gosh you're right. The president does think he's the president.

Re:Seems useless to me.

[HarvardAce]

Oh I can definitely feel your pain!!!!! Mine used to be the number for a Male Adult Escorting Service. And is also often confused with a local Women's Clothing store in a different area code.

Yes, I can feel the excruciating pain of having women who want to pay a man to provide them "company" accidentally call me instead...

Re:Fun for all ages and campaigns!

[Anonymous Coward]

telling someone else's creditors where to stick it ^H^H^H^H to not call anymore

It's "^W" to delete a word, "^H" to delete a letter. You're saying "...creditors where to stick to not call anymore". Your /. posting privileges are hereby revoked.

... Posting A.C. for obvious reasons.

Paging Jenny, you have a call on line 1...

[timlee]

867-5309

Re:hidden methods

[beanluc]

A computer running Linux and Asterisk
$500

A T100P (Asterisk T1 card)
$500

A PRI to a telco that lets you specify Calling-Party-ID (you can get this pretty easily from a lot of CLECs)
$500/month

About 30 minutes of coding up a simple perl or PHP script to parse a web form and use the data to dump a call request file into Asterisk's outbound spool directory.
Huh? What? Better contract this to Bangalore
$500.00


Callin' the boss from his daughter's cellphone to say "My pussy's on the Internet!!"
PRICELESS!

Re:Good God...

[David Horn]

He finally got it cleared up, but now they send him a monthly bill for $0.00.

Surely all he has to do is send them a cheque for $0.00?

Re:Sooner or Later...

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between George W. Bush and God is that one is fictional, and one should be.

I have fun at their expense

[Sans_A_Cause]

Who the hell does call KFC? I find it weird. Sometimes, before I had an obnoxious answering message, it would be along the lines of "I can't come in today". It was bizarre since, on my machine, I would clearly state my name and that I was out and would you please leave a message. Then, I'd get messages like "Uhh...I can't make it in today".

So, I went with a stronger message. My last one (before my Mom asked me to take it off) was:

Hello, and welcome to KFC's fat and disgusting line. If you're fat, press one. If you're disgusting, press 2. If you're fat and disgusting, press 3. If you'd like to know how our fried chicken can make you more fat and more disgusting, please press 4. If you realize this is not KFC and want to leave me a message, you can do that after the beep.

You should hear some of the messages that got left. Mostly..."what the hell...?"

My current one just promotes salad.

Re:Social Engineering

[Caseyscrib]

In the case of departments, how many people must have tried to call the MS Word Development department to bitch about something in Word not working right?

I know. I can't tell you how many times i've called those guys to get that damned paper clip off my screen. For whatever reason they think its a prank and hang up on me. I'll try again later this afternoon.

Re:Courthouse

[neomac]

I tried and I got, "The number cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again."

Definitely slashdotted..

Re:Fidel Castro has a PHONE?

[svallarian]

You mean him and dick cheney share a space?

we used to do that all the time

[bmajik]

except it was usually pizza hut answering the phone: "hello, pizza hut" only to be greeted by "uh, hello, this is papa johns"

it was a real treat to listen to the two angry pizza guys, both of whom were insisting that THEIR phone was the one that rang, work out who was the bigger jerk

3 way calling and the "mute" button is the best thing that happened to beeing a geeky teenager.

which brings to mind a question...

[Rimbo]

"Why is it that when we talk to God, we call it praying, but when God talks to us, we are schizophrenic?"

--Lily Tomlin

I have a more satisfying way to stop Telemarketers

[Dont_Call_Me!]

Caller ID is great for "ignoring" telemarketers, but I have hacked together an old PC and phone to make something I call the "Telecrapper". It uses the CallerID string to determine if the call is PhoneSpam. If it is it answers the call and plays a series of pre-recorded sound files. It uses silence detection to determine when the telemarketer is talking, so it carries on a virtual conversation with the dope on the other end. I haven't had one yet figure out that they're talking to a computer. These virtual conversations have all been recorded, and the best ones can be listened to at www.pagerealm.com/tc2k [pagerealm.com]. They are all very funny to listen too. Just scroll down to the bottom to listen to the example WAV files.

Setec Astronomy...

[brakk]

That always gets me in.

Re:Sooner or Later...

[Lord Kano]

God has answered me a time or two. No problems here.

God please, let the pregnancy test come back negative...

LK

Wrong Answer

[Skjellifetti]

But seriously, it doesn't matter whether it really "works" or it's just a placebo - if the machinery does what you want it to do, you don't need to look at the insides.

One of the questions from the guy test:

Alien beings from a highly advanced society visit the Earth, and you are the first human they encounter. As a token of intergalactic friendship, they present you with a small but incredibly sophisticated device that is capable of curing all disease, providing an infinite supply of clean energy, wiping out hunger and poverty, and permanently eliminating oppression and violence all over the entire Earth. You decide to:

• a. Present it to the President of the United States.
• b. Present it to the Secretary General of the United Nations.
• c. Take it apart and see how it works.

The only reason for not looking inside a black box is that there is some other more interesting black box next to it or maybe if your wife and kids are yelling at you to fix the plumbing disaster currently under way in the bathroom.

Re:Telemarketer's dream

[clambake]

For example, I could now see my Mom's name and phone number every time a telemarketer calls me. Now both my caller ID and Anonymous caller ID blocking is circumvented. Now I am totally unable to avoid the torrent of calls from telemarketers that has plagued my phone number for years.

Then it's time to start saying "yes". Yes I want your product, not just one, but 40,000 of them. I want to be a reseller. Keep them going as long as possible, get them all excited, and then gently lay the phone down next to the tv and go have dinner.