Fergie's Tech Blog

FCC Looking at Abuse of Phone Services for the Deaf

Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

The Federal Communications Commission this week asked for input on ways to curtail the amount of credit card fraud being carried out by criminals abusing Internet-based "telecommunications relay services" designed to help the the deaf and hard-of-hearing make telephone calls.

Criminals have been abusing TRS for years, taking advantage of the fact that by law, the operator who relays messages between the two parties cannot terminate or interfere in any way with the call. Much of this type of fraud is believed to be committed by the same people who send out Nigerian "419" e-mail scams: The crooks will place a call to an online merchant using an Internet-based TRS service and order goods or services with a stolen credit card number.

posted by Fergie @ 5/05/2006 09:21:00 AM