19 Jun
2004
19 Jun
'04
8:42 a.m.
On Sat, 19 Jun 2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
[9 0 #]
But then, this scam was originally started by inmates
calling businesses
from jail, and I think it morphed into people thinking it could work on
any phone, which is just an example of the ignorance of the masses. It
Actually, it started with a verifiable incident at a naval installation in
New Orleans. The ORIGINAL story was close to correct:
Service Technician that was running a test on our
telephone
lines. He stated that to complete the test the QMOW should
[snip] "touch the LINE key [for an outside line], then" [snip]
touch nine (9), zero (0), pound sign (#) and hang up.
From there it was deliberately corrupted into something
that can only be called a hoax. Miscreants who didn't
even understand the concept of "three-way-calling with
an outside line" rewrote it, dropping the traceback,
supplying a first person story of it happening on a
residential system, turning the simple idea of
"3-way with outside line" into a
"technological mystery incomprehensible to normal mortals" (tm)
and put in the bullshit about inmates as part of the
DANGER! DANGER! hook.
One version of the social virus says that the evildoers
have some sort of magical machine that lets them take
control of your account when you press those numbers.
And, most versions of that social virus explicitly
say that it is a DANGER to everybody's home line.
They've even created a new version that claims that
the evildoers can use it against your cell phone.
How many people (other than Sellam) have multiple
line mobile phones?
The assholes who take a legitimate story of a minor problem,
and turn it into a "pass this on to everybody who you care about"
WARNING! are worse than conventional spammers. They take
conscious lusers and zombify them into replicating their virus.
There is a pretty decent discussion of that particular hoax at
http://www.korova.com/virus/hoax980212.htm
there's even a non-HTML version! :
http://www.korova.com/ascii/kmr8003.txt
CAN work on a system that has the capabilities and is
properly programmed.
But this is perhaps less than .1% of all existing phone system
installations.
You know far more about phone systems than I do.
But is there ANY system that will initiate 3-way-calling
just by pressing 9 during a conversation?
Wouldn't there have to be some sort of hook-flash
or line button?
What would prevent the CALLER from DTMF control
of the system?
But with tolls so cheap today, it seems it's quite
a waste of time to go
through all that trouble just to make a call.
But that doesn't stop the resurfacing of the WARNING!s
that tell you that inmates or other lowlifes are going
to cheat you out of THOUSANDS of dollars.
The Spamminator (spammercidal maniac) has been tracking them down.