Nefarious Persons Use IP Relay Service
13 02 2009All..
A quickie one – if you’ll pardon the pun ;-]
This is where bad people use IP relay to foster fraud schemes. Interesting story there.
Swat Responds to Emergency Fraud
With the new required LN, this should reduce the fraudulent calls considerably as IP Relay providers will need to ask for name, address, etc. IP Providers are required to do a verification procedure to ensure the person is who he or she is and to ensure where they live actually live at the provided addresses.
eyes open & thumbs up,
Ed
These such scenarios are quite small in number, and media don’t often report these false calls made through normal channels. From what I learned from local 911 dispatcher tour, they are getting at least 20 “unsubstanial” or unverifiable/unsupported calls almost everyday, and they have to assess each call to determine whether to dispatch specific assigned personnel or emergency. Unfortunately, they often fall for these fraudulent calls other than these “false alarm” runs.
I wish the media assess this story a bit further on how does that incident compare to overall number of fraudulent calls, then factor to proportional ratios. I know there are about 6% of all telephone calls volume originated from TRS/IP Relay or VRS infrastructure at average; how much in volume does that involve fraudulent calls in general and how does that compare to all relay calls?
From a financial industry’s finding, data indicated there was about 4% of overall volume involved with fraudulent calls at average for a period of 5 years leading to that report. When financial industry became alarmed of these fraudulent relay calls, their number of fraudulent calls rose to 6% overall in late 2006, at which during time media was reporting that half of these fraudulent calls were contributed by relay calls. That was where the financial industry realized media might be inflating the ratio to make number of fraudulent relay calls seemed larger than it really was, so they went to test that hypothesis. It turned out that they were right.
Unfortunately, the financial industry decided to stick with that belief that half of these fraudulent calls came through relay calls to justify collective practice of turning away relay calls, despite several some additional evidence coming later indicating the otherwise.
What additional evidence that came later? Several of financial institutions’ internal tracking methods were to report all incoming relay calls appearing to be fraudulent, but instead of determining whether each relay call was a fraudulent, majority of internal personnel was reporting every relay call as such. It was because none of them knew the difference between each relay call, let alone the impossibility. Thus, numbers overall came out much larger than the reality. Now, we are living with these consequences based on flawed tracking methods, even insiders knew about them.
This kind of mis-reporting is hurting us, FCC should have stepped in to battle these misconceptions or to strengthen the enforcement for all entities to comply accommodations to all relay calls while debuking their myth that fraudulent relay calls are happening much more often. But FCC has been silent, which does encourage media to continue purporting such claims. Not only this, FCC wouldn’t do anything more except to referring all complaints to DOJ as exactly what ADA regulations dictated. Why act like an ostrich stucking in the ground while FCC bend backwards to accommodate VRS fee schedule. Couldn’t they do the same when it come to enforcing accessibility for all relay calls? It shouldn’t be that hard!
Hey Ed!
Perfect timing you brilliant person you!
I read your post on “swatting” yesterday and read the article. I had never seen that before.
THEN!! Last night on TV “FlashPoint” the story was about someone who attacked the Swat team (called “SRU” on the show) by using a spoofed phone and “Swatting” the Swat team.
I would not have understood the show if you had not already educated us earlier in the day.
You Da Man, Ed.
I work for a newspaper advertising dept. 100% of the relay calls we get nowadays are fraudulent. That is unfortunate but it is the reality. I haven’t taken a legitimate relay call for years. The hearing-impaired are probably going online to place their ads, that way they don’t have to bother with the operator at all. It’s a shame that the criminals have taken over this useful service.