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Re: [LUG] Scam Phone Calls

 

On Wed, 29 Jun 2016, Adrian Midgley wrote:

1. How much hardware is needed nowadays to run Asterisk and connect to the
phone network?

Raspberry Pi + ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) to do the wibbly wobbly stuff and possibly interface with existing analog phones in the home. I currently use an old miniITX board (533Mhz VIA CPU) with a PCI analog telephony card plugged in, but will need to buy an ATA when I finally scrap that.

2.   As an internal exercise and not on a public list consider how the
script for scamming *x users might go ... and then what information would
harden users against it ... and then how a machine might deliver that just
in time.

One issue now is that caller ID is no-longer a measure. Companies are rquired to use caller ID, but they're using fake numbers.

I once was plagued by calls from a debt collecting agency (mistaken identity on their part, but they would not go away). They did have an 0800 number to call back on, so I detected their incoming caller ID and hairpinned the call to their own 0800 number...

That was amusing for a while.

Gordon



On Wed, 29 Jun 2016, 16:33 Gordon Henderson, <gordon+lug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


You basically have 2 choices; the easiest is to say nothing but just hang
up. The best way to annoy them when doing this is to push 5 (or whatever
number the robot wants you to push), then wait until the human comes
on-line then either just hang up at that point, put them on-hold (which I
do which hangs up the phone when they hang up), or play with them ...
Which is the 2nd choice.

Playing with them...

Just saiy "hello, hello?". Do not acknowledge what they're saying at all.
Just "Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?" etc. The ones who want to put a
virus in your computer will hang on for some time, but the ambulance/ppi
chasers will hang up quite quickly.

Play Eliza with them. You obviously need to know Eliza to do this. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

Try to frighten them and give them nightmares.. "Hello? It's nice to talk
to someone. They hit me when they see me using the phone but I'm hiding
from them. They beat me up a lot.  I have to hang-up now as I hear them
coming ... Noooo" ... etc.

I feel this is a little unfair to play with the ambulance/ppi/survey
people, but it's their choice who they work for... But the ones who want
to infect your computer with a virus and extort you are fair game.

Blowing a whistle at them isn't nice though.

But the best way is to simply hang up. Get on with your life, let them get
on with theirs.

Actually that's not quite the best choice, the best choice is to actively
manage your callers by answering every call and giving them the choice:
Push 1 if you're a friend, 2 for sales, 3 for marketing and 0 for all
others. You only gate callers who provide valid caller ID and push 1
through... You need a clever system like Asterisk on a Pi to do this
though.

Gordon

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