Re: *72 during an incoming call? [telecom]

But there was a recent warning about a scam that involves being asked to
>dial * 72 while talking to an incoming call on your line -- a procedure >I don't recall ever seeing mentioned anywhere. >Does this exist? What does it do? What are the consequences?

It's a mixed-up scam warning. Once they get a few years old, scam warnings and other passed-around "urgent" E-mails tend to mix up details. If you look around for old "Craig Shergold" messages (the poor little deathly ill kid who wanted to break the Guinness Book of World Records for number of post cards received, but didn't include an expiration date on the message, and he's no longer poor, little, deathly ill, or a kid), you'll find that they changed both the spelling of the name and the kinds of cards requested as the years went by.

Rest assured that once you're connected to someone, you can touch tone to your heart's content without affecting your phone line.

Scams these days mostly involve wiring money or giving out information that could be used for identity theft, so if you're smart enough not to do those, you'll dodge 99% of them.

John C. Fowler, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

***** Moderator's Note *****

ISTR a scam where con artists would convince their victims to activate call forwarding by using the "Three way-calling" feature, i.e., by flashing for a dial tone and entering *72 while the scammer was on hold. This might have been limited to Centrex customer, but details are hazy.

The objective, of course, was to have the victim's phone forwarded to a high-cost number, presumably one in another country, so that the con artist could make repeated calls to that number without charge. I'm tempted to say that Skype et al have obviated such a con, if it ever worked, but I don't know who would be the con man's customers.

This is a varient of "Clip on" fraud, and (at least in the case of Verizon) the HP AcceSS7 system would flag such usage fairly quickly.

Bill Horne Moderator

In article ,

The con definitely existed. However, the object was *not* for con artist to make calls 'without charge' to that number, but to generate calls to a telco that (a) let the customer set rates for the incoming call, and (b) gave a large portion of those 'excessive' LD monies _to_ the owner of the receiving number. Sort-of like U.S NPA '900' calls but without the visibility of the 900 prefix, or the FCC mandated rate statement and option to disconnect before billing started.

There was at least one fairly wide-spread computer virus that subverted users dial-up access to their ISP to call a data number in the Former Soviet Union -- Moldavia, IIRC -- and the far-end telco was billing at dollars per minute. There _were_ arrests and convictions with regard to that scam. One can probably find at least some of the details in the Telecom Digest archives.

There were also numerous voice-call scams, terminating in the Caribbean and/or sub-Saharan Africa, where the 'connect' charge (incurred before the timer started running) was in the $10-$20 range.

Those telcos were happy to get the inbound minutes, as they offset outgoing 'foreign' calls, allowing them to keep _that_ revenue, as well as a portion of the 'excess' revenue from the rape-rate calls.

International treaties are such that the originating end can not make a decision to waive the charges for anything billed by an intermediate (or the destination) carrier -- such decision has to originate from the telco generating the inter-carrier billing. If the originating carrier does not collect from their customer, they have to pay the charges out of their _own_ pocket.