Caller ID Falsification Service 639
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."
Social Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the people who are going to profit from this the most will be guys like Howard Stern [howardstern.com] (if he's still on the air). He'll ring up anyone he wants and pretend to be working for some fake government agency while the nimrods on the line will be in fear if they have caller id. Oh the laughs... until the FCC has their way with Stern and shut him down.
How many kids are going to get into serious trouble with this service?
Let's not even start talking about all the wonderful social engineering that can now be performed with this great service. "This is Bill Gates. I forgot my password. Give it to me."
So all ye lawyers, would the owners of Star38.com be in the doghouse for this service when the masses start using it as a launchpad for social engineering? I'm thinking, hell yes (but IANAL).
Stalkers Everywhere Rejoice (Score:5, Insightful)
And now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bye bye, Asterisk [asterisk.org].
Illegal for Telemarketers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone have a license I can borrow (Score:1, Insightful)
Moreover, we all know that you cannot spoof a license for a private investigator. Those licenses are bullet proof and 100% legitimate. In fact, I have yet to receive a license from a Cracker Jack box or under the lid of a Cola bottle.
In a later announcement, invertigatorspoof.com released a license to spoof you number for 19.95.
Spoof on top of Spoof make Spooves?
Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Social Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
~S
Re:Social Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
"Alright Mr. Gates, let me call you back at your number and help you with your password."
Re:Anyone have a license I can borrow (Score:3, Insightful)
Please don't tell me you still trust the government...
make the service available only to licensed private investigators ...
Yeah, right. Hey, I write out the check and I'm a licensed private investigator. Who the heck ever determined that this should ever be legal, for any entity.
Re:How is this even remotely legal? (Score:3, Insightful)
While you might run into fraud or other laws, I'm not sure it would necessarily bother any wiretapping statutes. Spoofing caller-ID is different from actually changing what the *phone company* sees as the originating number, so if they're not doing that, they're probably okay. Well, except for the fraud bit, which can get pretty serious, but that would likely be the responsibility of the person using the service.
Re:hidden methods (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:And now... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe this got modded as insightful--because it's absurd. Just about any business not being run out of a garage (and some that are) all but requires a PBX or at least a Key system to function on a day to day basis. A bill such as you describe above wouldn't go anywhere even in our idiotic legislature.
Far more likely would be legislation requiring telcos to configure their switches so customers can't spoof numbers that aren't in DID blocks they own. Most already do this anyway.
Won't this cost the telcos? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would simply go back to an answering machine that screens my calls and pick up the line when I recognize the voice, as I did before CallerID.
Cheers,
Erick
Re:And now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good God... (Score:1, Insightful)
Perhaps the people should pay their fucking bills on time and not just ignore them for weeks/months/years?
Re:Good God... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you can't afford to pay your bills, don't borrow the money. It's just that simple. It's surprising how little money you actually need to get by. You do not need a cell phone or a computer or high speed internet or cable tv - or a tv at all. These are luxuries. You need food, shelter, clothing and transportation to your job. The rest is nice to have but not necessary.
Re:Good God... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good God... (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be lucky to never have had a major sickness in the family. Something like that can drain all bank account funds.
And while I am not defending those who owe money, do you have any idea how many college kids get 4 or 5 credit cards, thrown their way. Heck, they hand out t-shirts and phones and cd's for students who sign up. Students should be a little smarter, but it can be hard to resist the free give away.
Even if the debt is valid, do you think it resonable for collection agencies to call every day. It stinks of harrasment. Perhaps the credit card companies should be a little more picky with who they grant credit to. But for them, a $500 credit line which is not paid, and has interest of 19% or more, and a $30 a month over the limit fee, and another $39 a month late fee, can easily become over $2000 before the credit card sells the debt to some collection agency for a profit. Then the collection agency adds on a collection fee. You could easily see that small debt go up ten fold. They make money getting people into debt.
And I know this person who needed a car for work. Their credit was so-so, not perfect but everything was paid. The dealership sold a low end used chevy for $8000 even though the blue book value was $7000. It was the only dealership willing to finance a car for her, and at a high interest rate for 4 years. She did the math and found out at the end of 5 years she would have paid over $14,000 for that car. And 2 1/2 years into paying the debt, the car's blue book is now worth $3000 but she owes $7000 left. If that car breaks and she can't get to work, how can she pay that debt. She will not have a car but will have a monthly payment due. That is how people get in trouble.
Re:Good God... (Score:4, Insightful)
I just recently quit a job tgat I'd been working since December. I worked the night shift, and several times a week I'd find a collection call left in my voice mail from someone trying to reach whoever had my extension before me. At first, they knew they weren't calling that person any more, but later on they just had a machine do it almost daily.
Collection agencies shouldn't have the right to waste my time and my employer's money.
Re:Good God... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good God... (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno -- perhaps for the same reason suggesting that people attempting to collect debts should obey the law is "flamebait"....
Re:Good God... (Score:4, Insightful)
You must live in a perfect world. Too bad no one else does.
I know a guy who cancelled his cabletv and phone service over a year ago. The cableco was so F-ed up that they kept trying to bill him. He finally got it cleared up, but now they send him a monthly bill for $0.00. Every month, on the dot. No big deal right? Well, they also have sicced a collection agency on him for the original misbilled amount. He sent the agency copies of the last 6 $0.00 bills. They still keep claiming that he owes money. I don't know how much more proof than $0.00 bills for the last half year one might need to get the dogs called off.
Fortunately since it was a combo cable/telephone provider the only phone number the collection agency has for him is the same phone number that he cancelled when he cancelled his account with them. But that hasn't stopped the collection agency from sending him a bunch of those mysterious letters that look like junk mail and don't say anything but imply threats to life and limb, if not credit score.
All in all, he's glad he quit comcast (oops!), with their 1GB usenet quota and secret bandwidth limits and steadily increasing prices for broadband and tv, the incompetent billing is just the icing on the cake. I'm glad I never had them to begin with, and next time I move, I will make sure to stay out of comcast-monopolized territory .
Re:Good God... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is that most people will simply ignore the bills instead of taking some responsibility. If you can't pay, you need to call up the company and talk to them, not throw the bill away and worry about it next month. Almost every single company will work with you to negotiate something (not because they're nice guys, but because it is cheaper for them than foreclosure, reposession, or selling to collection agencies).
Re:Good God... (Score:3, Insightful)
Telemarketer's dream (Score:5, Insightful)
1.) Nearly all telemarketers have their Caller ID blocked because they don't want to actual name to appear in people's caller ID display and thus keep people from picking up the phone.
2.) I pay about $4 a month to have SBC (my local phone company) block all 'Anonymous' calls incoming to my phone. The caller has to leave a message or unblock their number to for call to be successfully connected. This filtering has reduced the number of unsolicited telemarketer calls by over an order of magnitude.
Now, telemarketers can falsely spoof any name and number they wish. They already know my full name and phone number and easily could construct a database of people that are related to me. 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.
This is has to be made illegal.
Man in the Middle (Score:3, Insightful)
This was also possible by abusing inproperly-set-up directory assistance. If you called the right service center from the right area code (or from a cell phone), they would need ask you where you were calling from to fill in the ANI when they made the connection. Hee hee!
Has been feasible for others (Score:1, Insightful)
This raises the security/verificaton of regular phones. This appears to be similar to the "email protocol" problems we are facing now which lead to the spam epidemic.
Re:Good God... (Score:3, Insightful)
You might have passed them up, but thousands figure, "i'll get the card for the free shirt or cd, then i'll throw away the card". Then they get the card, and figure $15 a month minimum payment is not that bad, why not upgrade my computer? Multiply that scenereo with 4 or 5 cards, and it can be a large amount of debt for a student.
I am giving you credit. You resisted the free give aways, some don't. Many don't even think about it, they just see "free stuff" and figure why not get it. There should be better education, but most of what people know about credit they learn from their family, if their family talks about it. When I was in high school, we had personal economics, but we never really learned what debt can be like. The teacher did not call us at dinner time to cuss us out.
I also believe the credit card companies are trying to get students hooked into debt early. Why not just offer a service, and not have all the free give aways? Is it because if there were no free stuff, students might think "do i really need a credit card" and would think about it more rationally.
Do you think it is reasonable to go for weeks/months/years without paying off what you owe?
Sometimes it is not about what you owe, but what you can pay. Do you seriously think someone will pay a credit card company when they can't feed themselves or pay rent? Those who get in deep trouble with debt normally lost a job or had something happen which changed how much they make or have in the bank. They are not people who make the same amount of money and have a nice fat bank account who say "for the next 6 months, i am not paying my bills just to tick off the credit companies". They really don't have the money. And if, for example there is some medical debt of $20,000 (which is what a kidney stone surgery costs), sometimes the interest on that debt can be more than the person can pay. Under those circumstances the person will be stuck with the same debt regardless of what they do.
The whole point of credit is a contract. As with most contracts, there are courts to resolve them when they go bad, and one side does not satisfy what is expected of them. But how many times have you seen one side of a party harrass the other when a contract goes bad? Can I call my local cable company president at home every time cable goes out or I have a bad picture? Can I call the Garbage Collection president at home because they did not fully empty my garbage, and demand he comes and picks it up that night? Or would a resonable person send a letter, and if the problem was not resolved and it was worth it to them to file a lawsuit, to go to court? What is resonable here?
Re:Good God... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good God... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not, of course. However, suggesting that other people are justified in breaking the law in order to recover these debts might fairly be considered flamebait.
If you can't afford to pay your bills, don't borrow the money.
That is very sound advice. Also, those of us who have no financial problems like to think of debt as primarily a moral issue - it makes us feel good about ourselves. But it is not always the lender who is the good guy. Consider the following situation. You must be aware that house ownership is a goal of most Americans. Unfortunately, not everyone has sufficient income to achieve this dream. Now if such a person applies for mortgage from an honest institution, they will be told the truth: they can't borrow the money because they won't be able to afford their bills.
This is disappointing, but as you say, you don't need a house - there are cheaper forms of shelter. But what's this? Here's an ad from people who claim you can afford a house! So you call them up, and they offer to lend you the money.
Now if you are a low-income earner, it is quite possible that you are not educated about financial matters; the two things are not uncorrelated. It is possible, therefore, that you will not detect the scam - because that's what it is. Here's how it works. An unscrupulous institution deliberately seeks out customers who can't afford loans, and lends them money. The only restriction is that some money must be put down by the borrower. The loan is structured so that the fees are very high and the down money is applied first to these fees. The borrower has no equity in the house even after making a down payment. The lender then wants the borrower to default - the sooner this happens, the sooner the capital can be recovered and recycled on the next borrower. Meanwhile, the old borrower is bankrupt and will probably be harrassed by collection agencies for residual claims.
The scenario described above is not hypothetical; it is the practice described as "predatory lending." Although legislation has been passed against it, it still occurs under various guises.
Re:Social Engineering (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sooner or Later... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Making Enemies of Enemies (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Courthouse (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good God... (Score:2, Insightful)
- I don't consider myself superior. And you're probably richer than me. But I don't complain about it - I'm trying harder and working 12 hr days (true, it's office work, but still). Read Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad, it's very inspirational.
- As far as credit cards are concerned, years ago I've found that the fewer I have, the better off I am. If you're a parent and you know this, how can you let your kids stack up five credit cards? If you don't know this and one day you get a suprise call from the bank, well, I'm sorry - you should have known better.
- Your call for social justice, that's fine, maybe you're right, but that's off topic on this forum. I just agreed with the grandparent's view that it's the kids' fault.
Don't sue McDonalds for making hot coffee.
Re:Telemarketer's dream (Score:1, Insightful)
Also, they could never afford the money for this service (14 cents a minute!) and they have access to equipment that will do this for them without the service.
If you want to worry about something, worry about your cell number being published in the "voluntary" directory (read your TOS, you voluteered when you signed up). This will actually cost you money.
Re:Seems useless to me. (Score:1, Insightful)
Hi, we're running late for dinner, what time do you close?
Hi, we're out-of-towners that got this number from a friend. What are the directions to your KFC?
Hey we're coming to your store, but have a muslim friend. Do you serve hal-al? (Okay that's a stretch :)
I can see many reasons for people to call KFC - even discounting people calling their friends/relatives who are employees there, or babysitters etc. calling parents who were going by there (family emergency)...
Lets face it. If there was no reason to call KFC they wouldn't have a phone now would they? And yet they do.... Hmmmmmm.