FTC builds case against telemarketers [Telecom]

hancock4 · 2009-05-23T00:09:06+00:00

The following article from the Phila Inqr describes some outrageousstuff pulled by telemarketers in violation of multiple laws and howpeople fought back. This includes spoofing the caller ID.See: anyone know if Call Trace (1157) works when a telemarketercalls? That is, does Call Trace send the real ANI or the caller-ID tothe Call Trace Bureau.Unfortunately, the Call Trace Bureau appears to only respond torepeated threatening calls, not mere sales calls and now has a highfee per use. They seem to really discourage people from using it. Ithink that's wrong--IMHO this usage should be encouraged and theBureau should be staffed with enough investigators to deal withviolators.One problem with telemarketers is that the govt only goes after themost outrageous violators (per above), and smaller crooks get awaywith it.

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hancock4 17 years ago

Could you elaborate on those reasons?

Interesting you mention that. Over the last few days I've been dealing with a business served by a PBX (not Centrex). They have one listed number for all incoming calls. But when I get calls from that business, the caller-ID could be anything (though in the exchange for that town.) Indeed, in thinking about it, when I get calls from other firms with a PBX the same thing happens. The caller-ID is telling me what outward trunk line happened to be selected for that particular call.

[Moderator snip]

Heck, say I was a small business with a simple key system, and my lines were 555-2300, 555-2301, 555-2302. I call out on -2302. Now someone could call me back on that, but the main number of my business is -2300.

In any event, it seems to me that if any substitution must be done, it should be done at the originating central office and nowhere else.

The idea of people hitting a button on their caller-id box to return a call seems very foolish to me. Just because someone calls from a particular phone does NOT mean they'll be at that particular phone when the call is returned. Someone could be at a pay phone or a stranger lending them a phone to use*. They could be leaving their office or home headed somewhere else. They could be at a friend's house.

Now that pay phones are rare and calls are cheap, many businesses will let a stranger make a quick local call as a courtesy. Many people will lend their cell phone to stranger, say at a train station, to make a quick call. This sort of thing happens quite frequently.

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danny burstein 17 years ago

Sure. You'll hear all about the Abused Women's Shelters stuff, but that's window dressing.

A more valid real world situation is that a hospital, say, would set up their system so that the calls from pretty much anywhere in their facility,whether the admissions office or the fourth floor nursing station, or, for that matter, a patient's room... would all display the main number.

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hancock4 17 years ago

That's exactly what teachers told us about using a regular encyclopedia years ago--they didn't want us using a single source and basically copying the article for our reports. They wanted us to locate multiple books and dig stuff out of them. But as you say, the encyclopedia was certainly a good starting point to explain a topic and provide cross references.

However, I will note that the old printed encyclopedias were more authoritative than Wikipedia is. On the other hand, Wiki has stuff on all sorts of trivial stuff that printed matter did not have.

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Tony Toews [MVP] 17 years ago

Then I'm trying to visit my brother at his new house in an unfamiliar city. I dial his number in with a wrong digit while I'm driving. (Yes, I know I shouldn't and I seldom use the phone while driving. I'm pretty sure I was at a red light. Does that satisfy you?)

Call goes to voice mail and I realize it's not my brothers phone. So at the next red light I re-enter my brothers phone number. While I'm doing that the person at the wrong number phones me and ask if I called her. I'm thinking to myself "You just cost me $0.55 on my prepaid cell phone to prove you're an @#$%$ idiot." $0.30 per minute network useage and $0.35 long distance. I politely told her that I had called a wrong number and hung up. I do wish that cell phones had a slaml-the-handset noise feature though.

Tony

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Robert Bonomi 17 years ago

I mean you can't get 'real time ANI' (delivered as CLID or otherwise) from company 'A', and dial tone/incoming call handling from company 'B'.

The _only_ source for ANI data is the phone company handling your incoming calls. And then only *IF* they offer it as a feature.

Yuppers.

Makes for some "interesting" discussions, when you're shopping for a telecom provider. Probably 90+% of the sales reps don't know what ANI is, and assume you're talking about CLID. Of those who 'do', at least 90% will say 'we can't do that'.

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T 17 years ago

When I worked for the State AG we had all our outgoing lines block CLID. This caused a few problems for me because I had turned on Anonymous Call Rejection (ACR) on my home phone because I want to know who the hell is calling. That's pretty much moot now with all the scammers playing with CLID data.

The realy problem was that while our trunks were capable of unblocking CLID on a dial basis, our Definity wouldn't pass the star codes. And dialing 9+1182+NXX-XXXX would be the workaround but too unwieldly to deal with on a regular basis.

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David Lesher 17 years ago

One thing I'm almost ashamed to admit to.... I'm confused where

911 reporting fits in. It's not CNID based; it's not ANI based [or is it?] either.

I know large clients such as colleges must buy special trunkage to the PSAP, and equipment that reports the physical building that originates the call. But where's the database of same?

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Al Gillis 17 years ago

And here's another half-way legit reason for providing CLID that's NOT the real DN of the calling phone: My employer's call center wanted customers to call the ACD number for various reasons and NOT call the individual agent's number. So we programmed our Nortel Meridian-1 to do exactly that. The agent's ACD key (on the telephone) sent the ACD pilot number; the personal DN key for that agent sent the actual DN of his direct Inward Dial number, however. This arrangement worked well for all hands, and for once I wasn't seen as a stick in the mud, old fashioned, hard to get along with, set in his ways Telecom manager!

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Robert Bonomi 17 years ago

Correct, "neither". PSAP trunkage is a 'different animal', using it's own signalling protocols. Not really it's own protocols, just some differently designated fields in some special-purpose SS7 call origination/setup packets.

Connectivity to the 911 center comes directly from the local C.O. that the customer tail circuit is attached to. That C.O. has knowledge of the actual wire-pair the call is originating from, and a simple *local* (i.e, to the carrier, not a common multi-carrier system) data-base dip will provide the location of the line termination.

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