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DOJ sues US telecom providers for connecting Indian robocall scammers:
The US Department of Justice has filed lawsuits (PDF and PDF) against two small telecommunications providers that have allegedly connected hundreds of millions of fraudulent robocalls from Indian call centers to US residents. The feds want a New York federal judge to cut off the companies' access to the US telephone network. The government says a judge has already issued a restraining order against one of the defendants.
Fraudulent robocalls are a serious problem in the United States—and the Justice Department says two US companies contributed significantly to the problem. Over a 23-day period in May and June of last year, for example, defendant TollFreeDeals connected 720 million calls to US numbers. According to the Justice Department, 425 million of the calls lasted for one second or less—suggesting that many were unwanted.
The feds say that during those two months, TollFreeDeals connected 182 million calls from a single India-based call center. Of these calls, more than 90 percent appeared to come from one of 1,000 source numbers. And of those numbers, more than 80 percent have been associated with fraudulent robocalls.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Monday February 03 2020, @01:02AM (7 children)
You're charging these little guys, but why aren't the major players who gave these douchebags continued access to their networks also being charged? Did they turn a blind eye to the practice so as to collect more $$$interconnect-fee-traffic$$$? Were they not bothering to monitor traffic onto their networks? How did 425 million one-second calls go undetected in 23 days? That's 213 calls a second, or 12,832 calls a minute, 24/7. How much does it take before it looks like a DoS attack?
Given that the calls tend to be concentrated during certain hours of the day, just the one-second calls must have broken 1,000 per second. How do you miss over 60,000 one-second calls a minute unless someone is turning a blind eye on purpose?
Sounds like another gang for the DoJ to go after for their part. Just how much is wilful would be interesting to know.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @01:48AM (3 children)
I am surprised that it has taken so long to even get this little bit of action. Should have been done 10-15 years ago. Meanwhile note that apart from Apple, Amazon and Fakebook all major tech companies are now headed by ex-H1B Indians. Google, Microsoft, IBM, the FCC.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @06:16AM (2 children)
That's right.
RaceCountry of birth is important when comparing two different people who have absolutely nothing else in common.(Score: 2, Troll) by Nuke on Monday February 03 2020, @09:56AM
India has a culture of defrauding. Check out some hookers' websites and see the number who say they won't see Indians - even the Indian hookers don't like them.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday February 03 2020, @06:15PM
It a blatant lie, anyway. Every single person he listed was born in the US.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @01:48AM
Because Ma Bell donated millions to the pockets of the gov't douchebags running things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @03:50AM
There are billions of phone numbers available under the NANP. But if you assume just 1 billion and that one percent of 1 percent of those are calling each other at a time, that is still 50,000 calls. 213 compared to 50,000 is less than half a percent of the total call volume for manual review, that is probably well below the noise floor.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday February 03 2020, @10:07AM
Maybe they are using these as trial cases to set legal precedents before they go after the big guys who have bigger lawyers.
Seems that they were detected, but not by the telecoms companies themselves who had no reason to.
They are cries for help. India needs more money as everyone is starving to death, they can't afford a space program, their women need more jewellery, they have to shit in the street, and they can't even afford computers and telephones - oh wait ....