BlogHer - Latest Internet Scam: Vishing - Comments

Does this stuff never end?

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 08:41:28 -0600

You are so right about needing a solution, but I don't know of one beyond the filtering that most hosts now offer. It helps, but doesn't completely solve the problem.

What I've seen about vishing does not mention whether you are eliminated from the practice if you are on the do not call list. With VoIP, a virtually free call can come from anywhere on the planet, so American laws don't matter to vishing scumbags.

The irony is not lost on me that we celebrate the openness of the internet and the ability to reach out through our blogs and share with communities we wouldn't otherwise have found, but at the same time we must be so vigilant with our personal information.

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Does this stuff never end?

Ronni Bennett — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 04:32:11 -0600

Ronni Bennett
Time Goes By

Although I use VoIP telephony, I haven't run into this scam yet. It's bad enough that three-quarters of the stuff in my postal mailbox is trash and 95 percent of my email inbox is junk, now I have to worry about my telephone? I thought the DoNotCall Registry had taken care of telephone irritations.

I was thinking this morning, as I cleared out about 150 pieces of junk mail from my inbox, how mind- and soul-numbing it is to see everyday, in email after email, words and phrases in the subject line that in normal polite conversation are considered obscene.

It not like it shocks me. At 65, I've actually done many of the acts being described although not with a camera pointed at me. But I was wondering this morning that if print magazines whose covers shout out such words and phrases are not displayed in shops and kiosks because the culture and municipalities have decided we don't want to muddy our public spaces in that particular manner, why then do we accept these in our email boxes?

And why has there been no useful attempt to attach penalties to email scammers who are not selling legal products? As I put serious thought to all this for the first time in quite awhile this morning, I realized that the junk mail in my postal box every day may be junky to me, but it is almost never a scam.

Is this so because the U.S. postal department disallows questionable businesses from sending mail through their service? And if that is so, why isn't the same criteria applied to electronic mail?

Yeah, yeah, I understand the cross-border legality problems, but I'm sure some smart people could figure that out if anyone seriously wanted to disallow electronic junk email.

Latest Internet Scam: Vishing

Virginia DeBolt — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:57:52 -0600

Vishing is a new type of phishing scam that uses VoIP technology. Instead of sending you an email asking you to click a link and confirm your account information, vishers use the telephone over the Internet (VoIP) to trick you out of your account information.

With VoIP technology, the phone call can come from and go to a computer. If you receive a phone call telling you that thereâ€™s a problem with your account and you need to call a certain number to clear it up, youâ€™re likely being vished. Hereâ€™s what happens. You call the number and you are asked to use the keypad on your phone to enter your account number before being connected with an operator. The computer at the other end of the phone records your account number and the game is on.

Everyone has learned by now not to click on an email link that asks you to input you account information, but using the phone for the same scam has caught some people by surprise. Itâ€™s easy to set up a fake caller ID, so the call may appear to come from the credit card company or other financial institution that the visher is pretending to be. But if the caller cannot call you by name and supply your account number to you, then itâ€™s most likely someone hoping to deceive.

There was a spate of publicity about this problem back in July 2006, but the problem has resurfaced recently, so be aware.