Boom;3454073 said:
I think there are websites that allow you to call someone and have it show as someone else's caller id number. Someone I know mentioned using it to catch her boyfriend cheating. The site is called spoofcard or something similar. I don't know if it uses the same methods that you speak of, though.
http://www.nationalpost.com/life/story.html?id=3033462
Caller ID spoofing used for harassment, fraud, critics say
Tobi Cohen, Canwest News Service · Saturday, May 15, 2010
It may seem like a harmless practical joke, but authorities say caller ID spoofing is increasingly being used for more sinister purposes than pretending to call your mother from the White House while disguising your voice.
It’s been alleged that socialite Paris Hilton used ID spoofing to hack into actress Lindsay Lohan’s voice-mail account.
New York City police say an identity-theft ring used it to obtain bank-account information and steal more than $15 million from 6,000 victims.
And a U.S. congressman has cited the case of a woman who posed as a pharmacist using the technology to trick a romantic rival into taking a drug used to cause abortions.
Launched online five years ago, the original caller ID spoofing service Spoofcard works much like a calling card.
It let users phone a number, and plug in the digits they want to show up on that person’s caller ID.
Users also have the option to disguise their voice and record the phone conversation.
The president of TelTech Systems, which patented the technology and has since sold it to other service providers, estimates about 200,000 Canadians have used Spoofcard.
“It’s a way that if somebody is avoiding your calls, you can really get them to pick up,” said Meir Cohen.
“It’s also a tool for privacy, and that’s really what most people use it for.”
He argues doctors and lawyers like using it to phone clients and patients from home after hours. It’s also useful for private investigators, celebrities and battered women’s shelters, he said, adding it’s more effective than the *67 call-blocking feature telephone service providers offer.
He said *67 merely masks calls and can easily be traced or unblocked.
In fact, his company plans to launch Trapcall, a service that reveals blocked and restricted numbers, in Canada within the next couple of months.
Celebrity scandals involving the relatively new technology have spawned countless damning headlines south of the border and, just last month, U.S. Congress passed legislation making caller ID spoofing for fraudulent and deceptive purposes illegal.
Some Canadians are quietly pushing for Ottawa to follow suit.
By comparison, though, the issue has barely registered this side of the 49th parallel.
It did surface earlier this month, when police in California arrested a man they believe was using it to sexually harass women in at least three states and three Canadian provinces.
Two years ago, constituents in the B.C. riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands raised questions about whether federal Conservative cabinet minister Gary Lunn owes his 2008 re-election to caller ID spoofing.
Some say his Liberal rival might have stood a shot if someone hadn’t phoned constituents days before the election and urged them to vote for an NDP candidate who had dropped out of the race.
The calls were spoofed to appear as though they legitimately came from the NDP riding association and some said the call led to unnecessary vote splitting.
While officials in Ottawa appear to be aware of caller ID spoofing, no department seems prepared to speak about it. Calls to Justice Canada, Public Safety, Industry Canada, the Competition Bureau and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission were all deflected elsewhere.
“It has some legitimate uses, however, it can also be used for identity theft, for sexual harassment. . . . We’ve seen incidences where people use it to harass an ex-spouse without having the number that they’re calling from come up,” said Shawn Hall, a spokesman for telecommunications company Telus.
“We would certainly like to see some laws put in place that would protect our customers from this practice.”
While the industry as a whole has yet to collectively demand change, Telus has been raising the issue with law-enforcement agencies and the federal government for some time.
Hall said the company receives a few complaints a year from customers who’ve been spoofed.
While he said he believes companies are well within their rights to program their switchboard number to appear on caller ID rather than the local of individual employees, telemarketers, for example, shouldn’t be using it to avoid callbacks from irate would-be customers.
“When we hear from customers with these kinds of complaints, we have a fraud and a privacy department that would try and figure out where the calls are coming from and we would work with our customer to put an end to them,” he said.
“If they have given out information and it looks like they might be the victim of identity theft as a result, we would work with them to get in touch with the proper authorities, to change their credit-card number and to do all of those kinds of things.”
Cpl. Louis Robertson, an RCMP officer with PhoneBusters, Canada’s anti-fraud call centre, said he’s well aware of caller ID, e-mail and website spoofing.
But even if Canada had laws to address the issue, enforcement would remain a challenge.
PhoneBusters, he said, is far too swamped to deal with it properly. His tiny team of six analysts already fields about 120,000 calls a year and as many as 8,000 e-mails every month.
“We’re looking at all aspects of fraud and cyber criminality, but we just need more manpower. We are understaffed right now,” he said.
“You can have the best law ever but if you don’t have the proper manpower to look at this spoofing problem, you’re not going anywhere.”
Robertson believes Canada is about five years behind the U.S. when it comes to fighting Internet crimes. He argues a few million dollars would go a long way.
“Other countries recognize the need for proper regulation,” he said. “I don’t know who in Ottawa is asleep at the switch, but we’re not present at all.”
Some caller ID spoofing companies have reportedly promoted their service as a means of catching a cheating partner, often by using it to bust into voice-mail accounts thanks to a telephone glitch that uses caller ID to let people into their own voice mail account without a password.
Cohen discourages that practice and argues it’s an issue telephone service providers ought to address.
He said he believes the percentage of people who use the technology for illicit purposes is small and noted his company works with law enforcement to help find those who use it to defraud or harass people.
“From a business perspective, the fraudsters are the ones that are hurting us the most,” he said. “We are getting affected by this. We don’t want it.
“That’s not the way we make our money.”
Cohen said he supports legislation in the U.S. Senate, which targets those who use the technology illegally.
But he believes the law recently passed by Congress is unconstitutional and is hopeful the language will be changed before it becomes law.
“You cannot tell somebody that it’s illegal to deceive or to lie,” he said, adding Florida tried to pass a similar law that was subsequently rescinded.
“You cannot ban and limit technology from people that’s powerful, good and productive (technology) just because there’s some bad apples.
“You have to directly go after the people who are doing this crime,” he added.
“The technology will still be available, it will just be harder for law enforcement to . . . track.”
Read more:
http://www.nationalpost.com/life/story.html?id=3033462#ixzz0t7i5CgUO
