Monday, July 11, 2011

Criminals lacking competence ... boiler room spoofers

For the last week or so I have been getting mobile calls between 1am and 6am from 408-555-1212. Fortunately my iPhone charges downstairs, so nobody was awoken by the calls.

This is, of course, the directory information number for Silicon Valley. It's traditional to "spoof" this Caller ID when cold calling victims.

But why between 1am and 6am? Where's the money in that?

Today they called at 6pm. Naturally I picked up. There as a longish pause while the dialing device transferred the call to a boiler room operator. Alas, I couldn't make out what she was saying. Her accent was thick (east asian?) and the VOIP call was breaking up. She seemed to be trying to pronounce the names of people I might know (Bob someone?). Perhaps she was trying to read a script about their hospitalizations, etc.

Alas, she gave up very quickly.

This is not a very competent ring of criminals. How do they stay in business?

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