[asterisk-users] Area code 757 "Car warranty" calls

Thu Mar 19 22:07:26 CDT 2009

Given the technology that lets folks who have equipment that listens to
the radio and automatically identifies the recordings being played to
generate Top 40 lists, allocate royalty payments to copyright owners,
etc.

It seems that it should be possible to automatically scan voicemail
recordings and identify these messages.  And getting a connection
to a voice mailbox requires a 3 -way handshake so we can record the ip
number the call originated from.  So it should be possible to generate
a dns black list similar to the ones used for email spam.

everything except the scanning of voicemail boxes and identifying
the voice spam is easy.  Don't know if it's too late to propose a
Google Summer of Code project.  But I bet some bright electrical
engineering students who are into signal processing might have a
lot of fun working on something  like this, and might well succeed
in creating the missing piece of this puzzle.

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 8:27 PM, Jon Pounder <jonp at inline.net> wrote:
> Cary Fitch wrote:
>
> two weeks ago when I said don't ever permit them to have phone service
> again I was labeled a radical.
>
> at&t and the other telcos are just dropping the ball here as I said
> before - with ip address spoofing we all have rules to prevent packets
> from entering our network which should have originated within it. if the
> telcos just did the same we would all be happier - and screw the
> "legitimate" use of faking ani, caller id or whatever level its
> happening at. Personally I would prefer to ignore the calls from my bank
> that are originating in asia since they are just trying to sell me
> something I don't want anyway.
>
>
> Rogers in Canada just lost a class action suit for failing to provide
> the internet service they said they would in their terms of service,
> (poor bandwidth, poor uptime etc), and this set a good precedent. I
> think everyone who pays to have caller id on a line should get together
> and file a class action suit - if the telcos can not guarantee its
> accurate, they are not providing the service contracted for, so either
> it should be free since its of no value, or they should fix it by
> whatever means necessary to guarantee accuracy. That is a gravy train
> service and if they were no longer permitted to charge for it, it would
> soon get the attention to a fix it deserves.
>
> Around here we get the calls from exchange 000 - tell me that takes more
> than a second of thought to be able to filter out....
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> Three or four area codes, all spoofed ANI.
>> We absorb their war dialing for about 2,000,000 unassigned cell numbers with
>> two Asterisk server which do nothing else.
>>
>> Since they are war dialing cell phone numbers, they obviously don't care
>> about any rules.  Trying to get any info from the people who respond to "1
>> for more information" is fruitless.  They will give no information about the
>> company and they or the person at the next desk claims to be a "supervisor"
>> who will relay our "concerns" to the management.
>>
>> We eliminated the Special Information Tones, as time wasters.  We get 10
>> calls or so per second. Hard to say... console is a blur on verbose 7.  We
>> do put them in a black list when we get a call, but that is manual process
>> and unless we get several calls on our own numbers... that slides.  They
>> change ANI often anyway.  (Another reason we know they are pirates)
>>
>> Our attorney says there is a law pending to make it illegal to "spoof an ANI
>> to defraud".  It wouldn't affect "legitimate ANI manipulations" such as
>> making all calls appear to come from a main corp. number, etc. It would make
>> illegal setting an ANI to some attorney's office or some insurance company
>> to defraud the callee.  I don't know if it would make use of bogus numbers
>> to hide identity illegal.
>>
>> We had a long chat with an AT&T traffic admin, this week, about our short
>> hold times, which turned into a discussion of warranty calls.  They are
>> aware of the problem, but say they can't do anything, because the calls come
>> from other carriers.
>>
>> We don't do CDR in asterisk.  We do in a Lucent switch ahead of Asterisk.
>> The Lucent switch produced 540 megs of "warranty" CDR files in February.
>>
>> In short, someone needs to find those people and explain things to them
>> clearly and with extreme prejudice.
>>
>> /rant off
>> YMMV
>> Cary
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
>> [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Ronny Julian
>> Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 8:11 PM
>> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
>> Subject: [asterisk-users] Area code 757 "Car warranty" calls
>>
>>
>> 757 area code right? They have been hitting my cell twice a day. I
>> always press one and go through the process telling them I have a 1959
>> Edsel dump truck that needs alot of work and how perfect this is going
>> to work for me... Either that or something else to waste their time.
>>
>> Their ANI info is spoofed too.
>>
>> Cary Fitch wrote:
>>
>>> I don't think the telemarketers care about them.  Right now we get
>>>
>> thousands
>>
>>> of "Car warranty" phone calls everyday, now for months, and given that
>>>
>> they
>>
>>> are illegally war dialing cell phone numbers, I don't think they listen
>>>
>> for
>>
>>> the Special Information Tones.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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-- 
Drew Einhorn