Scammers using spoofed phone numbers

[pmrid]

How is it that our telephone service providers/administrators have not taken steps to prevent this happening?

I’m sure you have all received many scam phone calls - some come from the usual “call centres” with live operators and some are recorded messages that you can’t abuse.

I’ve had one a day for the past week - each from a slightly different mobile phone number. A female voice says she is Daniel from PayPal and is calling about a $499 Bitcoin transaction on my account.

It’s the same voice and the same message every time. All that changes is the source number - always a mobile number.

The method is hardly new. I’ve had dozens and dozens like it extending over years. I’ve reported them as spam when I can but they just keep coming.

Why can’t our network stop spoofing on this scale?

[FlashDrive]

Peter....They probably simply don't care ...!! :shrug:

[dikman]

Col is right, they will only stop it when they are forced into doing so! They have the ability, but not the desire.

[taminga16]

Telstra spent a reported $4.3 million dollars in advertising tell us to be aware of Scams and still allow Scammers to use the system. Madness.

[Nikolas]

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine a lot of these scam calls have stopped compared to what it was like before.

[gary]

Back in the day of the switched telephone network, the out-of-band
protocol used to set-up and tear down phone calls and to offer services
such as callback-on-busy and caller-id were performed by an ITU Standard
known as Signalling System 7, or SS7 for short.

Back then, the only people that could get their claws into the SS7 backbone
were the telcos at the exchange level.

Since SS7 was carried "out-of-band", that is on dedicated sets of wires
running between exchanges that were different to the ones running to
end-user telephones, the physical security of exchanges with locked doors
and security alarms kept out the man in the street. In Australia, it was
therefore really hard to hack the phone network and do something like
spoof a caller-id because you were physically locked out.

Likewise SS7 had no in-built security in its protocols because it assumed
the security was physical.

Then came along VOIP and deregulation and every man and his dog
had access. Rather than needing a whole suburban block to house an
exchange, a box that sits on a desk or in a rack running software that
acts as an exchange became ubiquitous and you were in the VOIP service
provider market. No longer were there just a couple of big telcos
but dozens of tiny ones, many with obscure ownership.

The Internet then allowed for essentially zero cost calls to originate
in scam centers such as India, be routed via one of these desktop
exchanges, change the caller-id on the fly through software running
on them and you become whatever number you want to be.

In Australia there is no licensing required to operate a VOIP service
but they are supposedly regulated by the Australian Communications
Authority (ACMA).

But much of ACMA's regulation is for the service providers to be
self-regulating.

For example, as recently as last year ACMA brought new guidelines
about what they call "CLI overstamping". In Australia it is legal to
change your caller-id unless you are doing it for an illegal purpose.

But given the actual originating provider where the overstamping
occurred is pretty much impossible for the average consumer to
trace, who does one complain to?

It's become like a world where vehicle registration, driver's licenses
and number plates are no longer required. A free-for-all and chaos on
the streets. You get run over, report it to the police (ACMA) and its like,
"Did you get the number plate?"

It's biased completely in favour of the free enterprise system and service
providers. Only the reputable will self-regulate and many of the others
you would be hard pressed to determine who the ultimate owner was or
how to contact them even if you could trace it back to their exchange.

We get multiple number of these calls typically in a day.
Collectively, in just answering them, they must waste millions of dollars
of time for Australian households and businesses.

Something clearly needs to be done about them. Back in India, the local
authorities will be taking bribes and aren't about to shut them any time
soon.

If I had my way, I would cut the entire Internet connection to India :lol:
And Russia whilst we are at it. The amount of Internet scams would drop
by 80% overnight.

Seriously, I think the only thing one can do is be a squeaky wheel and
write to your local federal member. Pressure needs to be brought to
bare to bring it to a stop.