The originating and terminating carriers as well as the intermediate long
distance company theoretically all get access revenue. If you can get
someone to set up an SS7 trace you can figure out the route. This is a long
distance access scam that was around a few years ago, the FCC shut most of
them down. There were also guys doing it to 800 fax machines.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Hohhof
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 2:31 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [AFMUG] long messages on toll free number?
OK, this is kind of OT, but maybe someone here knows the answer.
For a few months now, we've been randomly getting long voicemail messages,
always some guy blabbing about government programs and stuff, almost sounds
like a radio show, not a political message like a robocall, I'm guessing
just constant voice to keep silence detection from ending the message.
I'm sure it's either a scam, or some attempt at toll fraud, but I can't
figure it out. The calls come at all hours but mostly at night, and the
caller ID will say something like NEW YORK NY or SAN ANTONIO TX.
I was just looking at our Windstream bill (they redirect our toll free
number because years ago we got that number from McLeod), and I realized
these calls are coming in on our toll free number. Which is really just an
alias for our local DID which goes to our VoIP PBX. Which had the max
message size at default 60 minutes. So these messages were all 60 minutes
long. I've changed the setting to 10 minutes, but that's still 10 minutes
of toll free word salad.
I can't figure out who is benefitting from these calls other than
Windstream. It's not a ton of money, but I want to stop it. The calling
numbers vary so I can't just block them. I looked up a couple of the
numbers and they seem to be from bandwidth.com thousand blocks, so
apparently VoIP calls, but I'm not sure that means anything other than VoIP
makes it easier to fake the caller ID.
What are these guys up to?
