The Feds and States are beginning to take an interest in Caller ID spoofing. On Friday, [Florida] state Attorney General Charlie Crist issued subpoenas targeting five different spoofing sites. For…
The Feds and States are beginning to take an interest in Caller ID spoofing.
On Friday, [Florida] state Attorney General Charlie Crist issued subpoenas targeting five different spoofing sites. For four of them, the subpoenas are directed at the registrars handling the services’ anonymous domain name registrations, and are aimed at unmasking the owners of the sites. A fifth went directly to one of the spoofing sites, Tricktel.com, demanding business records and the identities of any Florida customers.
“People use Caller ID to protect themselves from unwanted calls and contact from those who would do them harm,” Crist said in a press release. “It is wrong for individuals or businesses to deceive our citizens, and this cannot be allowed to continue unchecked.”
[…] The probe comes on the heels of a broad federal investigation that began late last month, when the FCC issued letters to at least three Caller ID spoofing sites demanding detailed information on the structure of the businesses, as well as the names of every customer that has used the services, the dates they used them and the number of phone calls they made.
The concern is whether the spoofing is being done to perpetrate fraud or bypass Federal law on telemarketing.
SpoofTel, which is based in Canada, says it’s outside of the Florida attorney general’s jurisdiction, but that the company doesn’t tolerate unlawful use of its service. “I would like to remind your readers that SpoofTel’s services are to be used for entertainment purposes only,” SpoofTel said in a statement.
Yeah. A million laughs, that Caller ID spoofing. And that rings as true as those disclaimers on fortune tellers that their services are “for entertainment purposes only.”
[C]riminals have reportedly used the sites while making pretext phone calls to wheedle private information like bank account and Social Security numbers out of consumers and companies. Experts say the services have also been used to target businesses that rely on Caller ID for authentication — Western Union’s money-transfer service has been particularly vulnerable, as are T-Mobile voicemail boxes in their default configuration.
“Primarily, we think that it’s a way for telemarketers to hide their identity, and consumers or citizens will be more likely to answer the phone if they don’t think it’s somebody trying to sell them something,” says Joanna Carrin, a spokeswoman for the Florida attorney general’s office. “We are using our deceptive and unfair business practices law to look into what these companies are doing.”
That’s entertainment!
Now, there are potentially some legit uses for the services.
Despite the obvious deception involved, Del Bianco says spoofing services are primarily used for lawful aims. “We’re talking about private investigators, skip tracers, law enforcement agencies, attorneys, others who are legitimately trying to locate people to enforce their rights or in many cases the rights of the public,” he says. “There are lots of legitimate uses of this.”
[…] Chris Hoofnagle, an attorney with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says he thinks Caller ID spoofing has legitimate uses, and would rather see fraudsters prosecuted for their crimes than have spoofing sites categorized as burglar tools. “I think the thing to do here is to prosecute the underlying fraud,” says Hoofnagle. “It seems to me it could be a privacy-enhancing technology that has useful purposes. For instance to call a police tip line or a newspaper perhaps.”
Frankly, I mistrust “legitimate” activities that rely on deceit, except in limited cases, though I agree that the underlying crimes are what should be punished. But the latter comment by Hoofnagle is silly; Caller ID blocking is quite different than Caller ID spoofing. One protects privacy, the other is essentially lying. I don’t see any reason to protect that, even if it’s potentially usable “for entertainment purposes.”
