Date: 24 Jan 2001 06:15:09 -0500 From: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org (Telecom Digest) Subject: Telecom Digest V2000 #197 To: telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Reply-To: editor@telecom-digest.org
Telecom Digest Wednesday, January 24 2001 Volume 2000 : Number 197
In this issue:
$2400 per minute for 809 calls - nonsense! Re: Verizontal Marks End of "Name That Domain" Contest Re: $2400 per minute for 809 calls - nonsense! REVIEW: "Gideon", Russel Andrews (Peter Gethers/David Handler) Re: $2400 per minute for 809 calls - nonsense! Re: $2400 per minute for 809 calls - nonsense! Touch-A-Matic Phones Re: Verizontal Marks End of "Name That Domain" Contest Re: Touch-A-Matic Phones Wired Crimefighters
Date: 23 Jan 2001 09:48:45 -0500 From: "John R. Covert Spam Sink" <nulldev@covert.org> Subject: $2400 per minute for 809 calls - nonsense!
Well, the quasi-urban-legend about the 809 phone scam is going around again. Last week someone at work asked me about $2400 per minute charges, and this morning WBZ radio in Boston was running the story including the $2400 legend.
The reason I call it a "quasi-legend" is that, as Telecom Digest readers know, there have been scams involving getting people to call 809 numbers, which, depending on the country actually reached, can be fairly costly. The scam involves kickbacks for the terminating customer in the foreign country from the local telephone company for receiving international calls. Unsuspecting people in the U.S. are left a message to call 809 something, and when they reach the number, they are kept on the line for as long as possible. None of the reports about the scam include the actual number, for some strange reason.
But the most bogus part of the internet story about the scam is that the charges are $2400 per minute. Nonsense. In some versions of the story about the scam, the numbers are in the British Virgin Islands, in some the numbers are in the Bahamas, in some the numbers are in the Dominican Republic. The most expensive of these countries is the Dominican Republic. Calls on AT&T for customers without any calling plan to the Dominican Republic are only $2.46 per minute peak, $2.06 off-peak.
After WBZ ran the story, I called them up and told them that there was no way callers were being charged $2400 per minute. It took some convincing, including being hung up on twice by some very rude woman in their news department, but finally I got to talk to "personality" Gary LaPierre, who told me to listen to their interview with a Verizon spokesman at 9:00. So I did. Of course, the Verizon spokesman just read the story off the Internet, and then when asked if the $2400 rate was true, simply said that Verizon didn't know what rates would be charged, since they were not in the business of providing international calling.
After 9:00, WBZ was still running the story, but at least had dropped the part about $2400 per minute. Gary runs an afternoon segment called "LaPierre on the loose" in which he gives "dope slaps". I left him a voicemail message telling him to give a dope slap to the news staff for running a story off the internet without fully checking it out.
The other problem with this story is that it is about ten years old. I seriously question whether the scam is actually still happening, or whether it is just another recycled internet story that will never die.
/john - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org.
Date: 23 Jan 2001 10:24:00 -0500 From: Carl Moore <cmoore@ARL.ARMY.MIL> Subject: Re: Verizontal Marks End of "Name That Domain" Contest
Message dated 9 Apr 2000 from jay@west.net (Jay Hennigan) in telecom digest V20 #58 has: >WILSON, CHRIS (VERIZONSUCKS-DOM)
> 555 12ST NW
> D.C, WA 20004
> US
A later message says the address (Washington DC, right?) is that of Arnold & Porter law firm. The *I* am making with this message is that the city & "state" are messed up, because "WA" is used for Washington STATE, not Washington D.C. Zipcode is correct for the street address of 555_12th St. NW. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org.
Date: 23 Jan 2001 10:27:48 -0500 From: Joel B Levin <levinjb@gte.net> Subject: Re: $2400 per minute for 809 calls - nonsense!
In <l03130302b69349f4556c@[192.168.0.3]>, "John R. Covert Spam Sink" <nulldev@covert.org> wrote: }The other problem with this story is that it is about ten years old. }I seriously question whether the scam is actually still happening, or }whether it is just another recycled internet story that will never die.
I think it's less than a year since I last got a spam promoting numbers in Antigua or other Caribbean countries. There used to be quite a few of those. A few were even pushing countries not in the NANP. (Most of these were not in 809. Check http://www.linmad.com/telesleaze.html .)
And it's only a few years since the scam which downloaded software to a user's machine which in turn disconnected it and redialed a foreign porn site that benefited from kickback arrangements. I'm sure there were phone BILLS upwards of $2400, possibly even phone CALLS. Of course the most I ever saw for a per-minute rate was in the $6 - $10 range.
/JBL - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org.
Date: 23 Jan 2001 10:39:34 -0500 From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <rslade@sprint.ca> Subject: REVIEW: "Gideon", Russel Andrews (Peter Gethers/David Handler)
BKGIDEON.RVW 20010105
"Gideon", Russel Andrews (Peter Gethers/David Handler), 1999, 0-345-43478-1 %A Russel Andrews (Peter Gethers) %A Russel Andrews (David Handler) %C 101 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003 %D 1999 %G 0-345-43478-1 %I Ballantine/Fawcett/Columbine Books/Del Rey %O http://www.randomhouse.com/BB BB@randomhouse.com %P 466 p. %T "Gideon"
This is a serviceable thriller. Reasonably convoluted plot, although not, perhaps, as surprising as the authors might think. And, as is prone to happen with collaborations, there are minor, but annoying, inconsistencies in the story and the characters.
(It's also just a little bit difficult to suspend disbelief about a single hunter who can track people all over the South, especially when the prey can swap driving and sleeping shifts, and the predator is driving a large vehicle with a silly and identifiable logo on the side. And then there is the dependence on the police being stupid enough to miss things like huge differences in times of death, and even wrong bodies.)
Take the technology, for instance. Communications technology, and particularly the Internet, plays a large role in the book, but it seems oddly unimportant. For one thing, most of it doesn't start until half way through the narrative. For another, while few overt mistakes are apparent (and some actual Web pages are used), no fundamental understanding of the technology is evident.
Oddly, although the book is clearly based on recent concerns over concentration of telecommunications ownership and Internet communication is used a lot, the bad guys don't seem to care about owning a piece of the networked world, concentrating on the traditional media. Not that this is unrealistic. The top black hat, rather obviously a combination of Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner, is only doing what most of his real life media baron colleagues are doing: staying as far away from the anarchic Internet as possible, and pretending it is a kind of television service with a great many channels. But an Augmon On Line could have added a lot of creativity and spice to the book.
In addition, the authors have a very US-centric view of international corporations. True multinationals like the one in the book would definitely have an easier way to get around the problem of a ban on direct dealings with certain foreign countries.
Turning to satellite services, there are a few problems. Geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) is certainly preferred for broadcast satellites, but it is far from the only game in town. And it wouldn't be necessary to have a gang of illiterate peasants build a high tech launch facility in French Guiana: the European Space Agency has a very nice one there, used quite regularly. In any case, even if you did manage to build a site and launch a rocket in secrecy it wouldn't remain a secret very long. Rockets are noisy, flashy things that can be detected exceedingly easily. Various interested parties check up on these things, not least because there are less than a dozen unassigned GEO slots left, and nobody is going to stand idly by while somebody pirates one.
Coming down to earth (if you'll pardon the expression), an 800 number still has to be assigned to a given phone line, even if the fax machine you want to use is installed in a computer. In any case, an 800 number is definitely not "non-area-specific," as Canadians and other non-US residents know all too well. A cell phone is not untraceable: as soon as it is turned on in a service area the position is known to within a few miles, and, in urban areas, usually much closer than that.
In these highly wired days it is odd that anyone who can track down an email address for a non-acquaintance would be so lax as to endanger a close friend by using an identifiable email account to send a highly dangerous message. Even without getting into anonymous remailers, surely such a person would know about the various Web based free email services, which allow anyone to create an essentially untraceable account within seconds.
But when they really want to hold secure communications, they turn to instant messaging (IM). This is really laughable. First of all, while journalists are now starting to work fairly heavily with the Internet and while some will undoubtedly have greater skills in this area than others, it simply isn't true that every large news organization has a "hacker" on staff, particularly the mythical system breakers who are supposed to be able to break into bank and credit card databases at will. In addition, being able to crack a system is no indication that you can secure one. As Gene Spafford points out, being able to pour sugar into a gas tank teaches you nothing about auto mechanics. Mostly, though, instant messaging just isn't very reliable. Email is asynchronous, and generally gets to the recipient eventually. IM requires both parties to be online, with clients active, at the same time--and on the same system. This is one of the reasons that most "by the hour" computer rental places wouldn't have IM installed. The other reason is that instant messaging systems are notoriously insecure. One popular IM system has had password, trojan, and other security problems in a never ending stream ever since it started. Another major player has deliberately opened buffer overflow holes in its own client program--apparently in an attempt to avoid compatibility with other systems. Using IM for secure communications makes about as much sense as posting your confidential messages on random billboards.
The final "get the baddies to incriminate themselves" denouement lacks some detail. However, it makes up for many of the prior mistakes by being creative, effective, using technology well, and being technically correct.
copyright Robert M. Slade, 2001 BKGIDEON.RVW 20010105
====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@sprint.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca p1@canada.com My mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves completely. http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org.
Date: 23 Jan 2001 11:29:04 -0500 From: Barry Margolin <barmar@genuity.net> Subject: Re: $2400 per minute for 809 calls - nonsense!
In article <l03130302b69349f4556c@[192.168.0.3>, John R. Covert Spam Sink <nulldev@covert.org> wrote: >After 9:00, WBZ was still running the story, but at least had dropped
>the part about $2400 per minute. Gary runs an afternoon segment called
>"LaPierre on the loose" in which he gives "dope slaps". I left him a
>voicemail message telling him to give a dope slap to the news staff for
>running a story off the internet without fully checking it out.
I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. With a legend like this, it's probably not too difficult to find several "experts" who will confirm it, which is good enough for a fact checker (how much research do you really expect for a little story like this?). Even the response from the Verizon spokesman can seem like mild confirmation -- if it were really unlikely, they might have laughed at it, rather than making the noncommittal "We don't do international calling, so we can't comment on their prices" response.
- -- Barry Margolin, barmar@genuity.net Genuity, Burlington, MA *** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups. Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org.
Date: 23 Jan 2001 12:15:10 -0500 From: Linc Madison <lincmad001@telecom-digest.zzn.com> Subject: Re: $2400 per minute for 809 calls - nonsense!
In article <3a70a088.297032554@news.gte.net>, Joel B Levin <levinjb@gte.net> wrote:
> In <l03130302b69349f4556c@[192.168.0.3]>,
> "John R. Covert Spam Sink" <nulldev@covert.org> wrote:
> }The other problem with this story is that it is about ten years old.
> }I seriously question whether the scam is actually still happening,
> }or whether it is just another recycled internet story that will
> }never die.
>
> I think it's less than a year since I last got a spam promoting
> numbers in Antigua or other Caribbean countries. There used to be
> quite a few of those. A few were even pushing countries not in the
> NANP. (Most of these were not in 809. Check
> http://www.lincmad.com/telesleaze.html .)
I've seen spams, and certainly Usenet spams, fairly recently. I don't have any recent reports of the pager scam or the "your relative is in the hospital/in jail/left you a fortune/whatever" answering machine scam.
> And it's only a few years since the scam which downloaded software to
> a user's machine which in turn disconnected it and redialed a foreign
> porn site that benefited from kickback arrangements. I'm sure there
> were phone BILLS upwards of $2400, possibly even phone CALLS. Of
> course the most I ever saw for a per-minute rate was in the $6 - $10
> range.
Actually, this one is still going on. I got an e-mail from someone just last month whose dialup connection was rerouted to Vanuatu, with a 101-xxxx code for AT&T (not his default carrier), resulting in rates in the vicinity of $6/minute. ($60+ for a 10-minute call) There are plenty of "FREE porn dialers" splashed all over the newsgroups, too. (Golly gosh, they GIVE AWAY this FREE program that will let me download nekkid girlies/boytoys/farm animals, and all I have to do is let it dial their number in some country I've never heard of! What a *deal*!!)
However, that's not a "1+" call, as the 809 and related codes are. The highest rates I've seen for those numbers are under $2/minute, and even most companies have rates under $1/minute for most of the Caribbean without subscribing to an international discount plan.
The origin of the whole $2425/minute or $24100 per call numbers is simply Usenet itself. Some systems convert the dollar sign into =24 (for ASCII hex value 0x24). Thus $25/minute turned into =2425/minute, which some helpful human turned into $2425/minute. If you ever see a spam claiming $242,425/minute, just remember you saw it here first.
- -- Preferred reply address: Telecom # LincMad * Com - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org.
Date: 23 Jn 2001 12:22:46 -0500 From: Fred Atkinson <fatkinson@mishmash.com> Subject: Touch-A-Matic Phones
Some time back, the Bell companies used to manufacture a phone called a 'Touch-A-Matic' phone.
Are these phones still available? Does anyone know where one can be had?
I've searched the Internet for them. There is information about them, but nowhere does it say where one can be had.
Thanks,
Fred - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org.
Date: 23 Jan 2001 13:12:23 -0500 From: jay@west.net (Jay Hennigan) Subject: Re: Verizontal Marks End of "Name That Domain" Contest
On 23 Jan 2001 10:24:00 -0500, Carl Moore <cmoore@ARL.ARMY.MIL> wrote: : :Message dated 9 Apr 2000 from jay@west.net (Jay Hennigan)
Now there's a voice from the past...
:in telecom digest V20 #58 has: :>WILSON, CHRIS (VERIZONSUCKS-DOM) :> 555 12ST NW :> D.C, WA 20004 :> US : :A later message says the address (Washington DC, right?) is that :of Arnold & Porter law firm. The *I* am making with this message :is that the city & "state" are messed up, because "WA" is used for :Washington STATE, not Washington D.C. Zipcode is correct for the :street address of 555_12th St. NW.
I would attribute this to poor programming in Network Solutions' (or whatever registrar's) address parser. It's probably trying to render any string as FIRSTNAME LASTNAME. Could also be with a submission agent's parser.
So, if he had entered "CHRIS WILSON" as a name it would correctly have been flipped to WILSON, CHRIS.
When he entered WASHINGTON D.C. it got flipped to D.C, WASHINGTON, and the parser then (correctly but incorrectly) found a match in the state tables, and substituted "WA" for "WASHINGTON".
I would suspect there are others that are similarly mangled
- -- Jay Hennigan - Network Administration - jay@west.net NetLojix Communications, Inc. NASDAQ: NETX - http://www.netlojix.com/ WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org.
Date: 23 Jan 2001 15:25:00 -0500 From: Joseph Singer <dov@mail.oz.net> Subject: Re: Touch-A-Matic Phones
On 23 Jan 2001 12:22:46 -0500, Fred Atkinson <fatkinson@mishmash.com> wrote:
> Some time back, the Bell companies used to manufacture a phone
>called a 'Touch-A-Matic' phone.
>
> Are these phones still available? Does anyone know where one can
>be had?
>
> I've searched the Internet for them. There is information about
>them, but nowhere does it say where one can be had.
I see them occasionally on eBay, but aside from the nostalgic value of a Touch-A-Matic there are loads of phones that you can readily buy today that have one touch dialing of numbers and can provide more numbers than a Touch-A-Matic ever could. Granted these modern phones aren't built like tanks as the WECO equipment was, but are more than able to do the same thing that a Touch-A-Matic did and even have more features. I've seen a few single line Touch-A-Matics, but I've seen more "key" 1A2 type Touch-A-Matics. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Joseph Singer Seattle, Washington USA - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org.
Date: 23 Jan 2001 17:35:53 -0500 From: sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steve Sobol) Subject: Wired Crimefighters
Wired crimefighters
Conference helps police close gap with online criminals
By Bob Sullivan MSNBC
MASHANTUCKET, Conn., Jan. 22 - Police in Boston had reached a dead end. They had a murder suspect, but not nearly enough evidence, and the investigation was growing cold. But a computer-trained ATF agent went undercover, and for once, used the Internet's anonymity to law enforcement's advantage. After all, if the good guys can do it so can the bad guys. Welcome to the brave new world of cyber-policing.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/519652.asp
- -- Steve Sobol, BOFH, President 888.480.4NET 866.DSL.EXPRESS 216.619.2NET North Shore Technologies Corporation http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net JustTheNet/JustTheNet EXPRESS DSL (ISP Services) http://JustThe.net mailto:sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Proud resident of Cleveland, OH - -- The Telecom Digest is currently mostly robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org.
End of Telecom Digest V2000 #197