BBC Panorama - Spying on the Scammers

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rockits

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Interesting program on Delhi call centres scamming poor unsuspecting folk.

We know it goes on but little to nothing is being done. Pretty poor show.

PayPal and all the banks can all easily do more and are supporting these criminals.

Love the hackers hacking the scammers networks and taking over their CCTV cameras!

It is a big and growing problem so make sure you less tech savvy friends and family are aware and don't fall foul of it.
 
Watched this too and found it interesting.

Ridiculous that more is not being done to shut them down and ultimately send the fraudsters to prison, a slap on the wrist and fine would not deter them as they would simply setup again.

Latest scam call we get at work sounds like it comes from one of these places.
They are our energy supplier, "can't bill us correctly and they need us to get a bill and give them our meter number".
Some of them get rather pissed when we tell them no, no idea how the scam works, guess they would likely move us to a new supplier.
 
Agreed. What I don't get is the global and govt. push of 1st world countries to electronic tracked payments and a cashless society. Then they do jack about the crime that is even more visible than it was before.

How much evidence is required to shut these guys down and throw them in jail?!

I've had loads of these calls and doesn't take long for the to hang up. This IT/tech world is my daily business and has been for over 25 years. Trouble is many folks are not so informed and vulnerable.

They ask me to go to my PC and go to this web page. I reply...sorry I don't have a PC only a mobile phone. They ask again....same reply....phone goes dead!

It seems ridiculous you have to have in effect vigilante hackers committing crimes.themselves to try to help resolve these issues.

I wonder if a hacker can be prosecuted for commuting a crime against these scammers? Would be a bit weird to enforce that surely.
 
The police are not informed of fraud complaints where less than £100,000 were taken. Let alone a fraud attempt from overseas where no monies were successfully taken....

ActionFraud stores all fraud complaints in a (civilian) database, the police can look at the data if they need any specific information, but as said if it's under £100k the reports never actually get to the police, but stay with ActionFraud.

See also:
Action Fraud scandal is the result of poor funding of financial crime
 
These scammers are utterly despicable and as mentioned already, I don't understand why the authorities and banking organisations are not able or are unwilling to act effectively to put a lid on their activities.
 
Agreed. What I don't get is the global and govt. push of 1st world countries to electronic tracked payments and a cashless society. Then they do jack about the crime that is even more visible than it was before.

.

The reason for the drive to cashless society I suspect is to impede the black market. As a strategy in the 'war against drugs' it is more likely to make drugs and deeds the new currencies.
Authority that will turn a blind eye to potentially thousands being ripped off for £thousands (but less than £100k) is hardly in a position to see the (unintended) consequences of its actions - or care.
 
Not an expert but could BT identify these numbers at their exchanges and block them ?
 
The numbers will be spoofed and constantly changing.
 
There will often be a theoretical way to track these operations down pretty easily. They are a fixed office with various services using suppliers services so easily possible to locate them.

Very different when you start to talk about individuals on laptops with mobile connections or routing through 3rd party networks as much harder to track and locate.

These kind of operations should be quite simple really for police forces to track down and locate.
 
The police in these countries where this is rife like India as featured in the show could probably utilise the services of hackers abroad similarly.

They could perhaps pay a nominal sum to those assisting if they provide good evidence of what is happening like the guy featured did and it leads to a successful prosecution.

Having to make the person from another country turn up to say India to make a complaint is hardly going to be a likely thing - perhaps a change in the law to pursue wrong-doing without a victim?

I get the sense the authorities weren't interested in pursuing it.
 
They usually ask you to open Windows, after a little while I ask if I can shut Windows as it's rather cold with them open......click
I had the usual call yesterday about "your accident", I told them I hadn't had it yet, could they call back next week, they hung up?
 
I usually ask the caller which accident I've had they are referring to. Sometimes they persist for quite a while before getting the message and hanging up.
 
I usually ask the caller which accident I've had they are referring to. Sometimes they persist for quite a while before getting the message and hanging up.
For what it's worth, we are now going to get rid of our house phone and only use mobile and broadband, not only will this save a couple of hundred £ a year but this action will reduce significantly the number of nuisance calls, and any that come via my mobile can be easily blocked. Two other behaviours I have adopted are 1. Unless I'm expecting e-mail contact I never give my true e-mail address, sign in's at airports etc. get a false name & e-mail and a random flight number from the departure board 2. I use the same approach when asked to provide my telephone number, I change one digit. While some business have a legitimate need to contact me and will get correct details it's always worth pausing and asking yourself why is this detail needed? and if you can't think of a good reason don't share personal details.
 
Well India is a corrupt country ,thats official,the tax take is around 70%,and the government elected to stamp out corruption has failed ,there is history to all this that the people do not trust central government and the local government is laxed,the economy is cash driven,and so there is a gigantic problem with gathering tax,small businesses and shops are cash only,something that should be stamped out in this country,with all this happening little wonder these scammers can operate freely.
 
There are a couple of YouTube videos, where the "victim" reverse hacks the guys in India and then proceeds to trash their data & systems. I do not know if they are genuine but it is amusing.
 

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