TrapCall Service To Bypass Caller ID Blocking 399
cemaco writes in with news that TelTech, developers of the infamous SpoofCard service, have come out with something even more controversial: a set of services for revealing blocked caller ID numbers. The services take advantage of a loophole in the way caller ID blocking works — it has never been effective when calling an 800 number, because the recipient is paying for the call. So TelTech instructs you how to forward blocked calls (transparently) to their 800 number; the call comes back to your phone in seconds with the formerly hidden caller ID revealed. Advocacy groups for victims of domestic violence are concerned. Victims of annoying calls hiding behind caller ID blocking are rejoicing.
Yeah really (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are calling me then I have a right to know who you are AFAIC.
Blocking Caller ID illegal in some states (Score:5, Interesting)
The State of Michigan and I believe 6 other states passed laws written by the RIAA to make it a felony to mask your IP address. The laws were written so broadly though, that masking the information about any electronic identity would constitute a crime including caller ID.
Many states modified this before passage, but Michigan and several other states just passed the RIAA bill as submitted.
It is a class 3 felony to block caller ID in Michigan.
Thanks RIAA
Re:Yeah really (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree. If the phone number is blocked I do not answer. I don't talk on the phone to anonymous people. I don't use voice mail either. So you either call from your unblocked phone # that I recognize or I don't answer. Hell I am not really sure why I have a telephone anyway. The number of people I wish to communicate with via voice is a single digit.
Re:both blocking and unblocking - which wins? (Score:4, Interesting)
I shouldn't have to reveal my number just because the other party wants it, if they really want it they should have to ask. That way I get a say in whether or not my number ends up on a list.
The most sensible thing to do is to get no-caller-ID-blocking. That way, people who block caller ID get a message that they have to enable it to call you. I think people who block caller ID are cocks, and moreover they're stupid cocks because loopholes like this ALWAYS existed.
As others have said, if you want to communicate anonymously, there are means for you to do that. The telephone system was built with public dollars and there is little benefit to even permitting anonymous calls, especially since they are not really and never have really been anonymous. Before caller ID even existed, they were logging all your calls for billing purposes. That information has always been available to "the powers that be". The only thing you get out of an anonymous phone call is being anonymous to technical incompetents, which you can achieve by using a payphone or a prepay cellular phone when you're not talking about people who can subpoena (or just examine) your telephone records.
I do not have non-caller-ID-calls blocked... yet. But I certainly don't ever answer a call on my cellphone that comes in as "Private". That means I never answer my mom's phone calls, an acceptable loss. :P
What about callerID spoofing? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's one thing to block your callerID from being presented to the end user - in that case, the intermediary telcos will still be able to see the callerID; they pass it between themselves, but just don't pass it to the final end user. That's how this system works -- because they're a telco, they get to see the callerID, but unlike other telcos, they've decided to pass the information on regardless.
But what about spoofed callerIDs? They're the ones that I feel would be genuinely useful to unmask. But sadly, this system won't work in these cases. If the callerID is tampered with at source, that tampered value is what gets passed between the telcos, so there's nothing useful that can be unmasked.
Re:I don't get it ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, battered women's shelters and advocacy groups can help with this problem. They often actually buy victims throw-away cell phones for this purpose.
Re:both blocking and unblocking - which wins? (Score:3, Interesting)
There are very few justifications for hiding the number. If you want to talk with me, you *sould* have to reveal your number.
At the moment (not being an abuser) I can not think of ANY reason for you to call me without identifying yourself where I would have any interest in talking with you.
My cell phone is already programmed with a "silence" ring tone for the number "UNKNOWN", so I never even know if you call. Any number not in my phonebook gets a default ringtone that I seldom answer. So, you can leave a messsage, and if it catches my interest and you provide useful identification, then maybe I'll call back.
I've always disagreed with having to pay to NOT be listed in the phone book. That's a completely different issue, though. Just the fact that I have a phone does not mean that everyone should be able to look up my number and address.
However, if you call someone, they *should* get your real phone number (but not your address). If you don't want them to have your number, then don't call them. Or, get a pre-paid disposable cell phone.
Re:I don't get it ?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Surely it must be possible to create a system that acts as a proxy for phonecalls? Other organizations could then subscribe and register their phone numbers with the proxy. Phone the proxy, then enter the phone number you want to call, and the proxy calls that number for you and starts acting as a (dun-dun-DUN) proxy. All the callee can see is where the proxy is located.
Does this kinda thing exist already?
Re:I don't get it ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Although I agree with your sentiment about the OP's attitude, it is an unfortunate fact that protection orders are routinely used by the woman's lawyer in a divorce case. My brother in law is going through a really nasty divorce right now, which his wife initiated when his salary got drastically cut. The first thing she did was file for a protective order against him, on the grounds that she was "afraid" of him. It was granted immediately, since that is policy in most courts, and now he can't enter his own house. Meanwhile, she gets to strip the house of anything of value (like checkbooks, etc.) and he can do nothing about it. And as far as I know, the only "violence" he ever employed was on his high school football team.
Women like this play right into the "they're all lying" crowd, and reinforce the misogynistic views that some abusers have.
Re:I don't get it ?? (Score:3, Interesting)
I would guess that victims of domestic violence would NOT be calling their abusers but would potentially be receiving threatening/harassing calls from their abusers.
Why wouldn't they be rejoicing about this?
Re:Yeah really (Score:2, Interesting)
Psst, bud, your naivety is showing.
Smart people can behave in illogical ways. [prisonexp.org]
One battered woman that I know is a molecular biologist - not stupid, and yet she waited for her husband to end the marriage. In many cultures, a battered wife is more or less the norm, and we seem to have evolved a coping mechanism that seems odd when viewed in the context of modern American society.
Re:both blocking and unblocking - which wins? (Score:3, Interesting)
Try this on. My wife's a veterinarian. She will often make follow-up calls on emergencies and critical care patients from home. She tells clients she will do this and that the callerid will be blocked.
In that case, you SHOULD answer. She's under no obligation to give her her home number. If she did, sooner or later, she'd be getting calls at 3am from people who should have gone to the emergency clinic.
She's calling on her own time to follow up on your pet. The face that she cares enough to do that (rather than wait until the next day) doesn't mean she should give up more of her privacy.
And you do know that, at least for landlines, if I google your non-private number, I'll not only get your address, but a map and satellite image of your house. So there's no such thing as "you should give up your number, but not your address". They are easily linked.
Re:What is the ratio of bad calls to good? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm... maybe it is a unique service, but I know that we have such a service here for home phones. See: Bell Call Privacy [www.bell.ca] (sorry for their horribly undescriptive page, but basically the idea is that if you have call display blocked, it will ask you to key in a number in order to be connected.)
What has always surprised me (and I know this is slightly off-topic since the topic seems to be about cell phones and not PSTN) is that no enterprising phone device manufacturer has built an inexpensive phone that allows you to filter calls based on phone numbers, or change ringtones. Caller ID is pretty widespread, and I can't imagine the technology to do filtering would be much more expensive to implement. You'd probably want to make it configured over a USB port on a PC, but with the recent response to Canada's national do not call list I would think there would be at least some people interested in spending an extra $10 on a phone that had such a feature.
Re:I don't get it ?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Show up with a nice "XXX Women's Shelter" On call display so that the women can be hunted down?
Why bother running a women's shelter if you're not going to bother hiring security for them?
Re:I don't get it ?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Security through obscurity - a hidden location - is often "good enough" in meatspace, and considerably cheaper than 24 hour armed guards.
See here [safehorizon.org] for an example of a shelter with a secrecy policy
Re:Anonymous retribution? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because people who abuse their spouses and children generally abuse the courts as well...
Re:I don't get it ?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Much ado about nothing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Caller ID is not and never has been a reliable way of determining the origin of a call (either the number, the person, or even the location).
Caller ID 'blocking' is not and never has been a reliable way of hiding the origin of a phone call (either the number, the person, or the location).
Knowing a phone number at which you can reach a particular person or organization (or from which they placed a call to you), does not necessarily tell you anything about their location.
Prior to cell phones and the Internet, a number could certainly give you a general idea as to the state/city/county/etc where a given line was located. If it was the public number of a business or organization, you could often find that information.
Enter cellphones - all you could tell was the general location of the address of the person that opened the cell account. Given the mobile nature of a cell, only the cell company would be able to have any idea as to the actual location of the person/phone, and only when it was turned on.
Enter the Internet - previously, if you knew a name, and that person has a listed number, you could find it. Once that database became available electronically, it was a simple matter to sort (or search) by the number, making the reverse true. You might get just a name, you might get an address. Again, only if its 'listed'. Now there are companies that (for a fee) claim to be able to do lookups for unlisted numbers as well.
Enter VoIP - all bets are off. You can be in NY and get a CA number. You can sign up in TX, have the service there, and you can take your ATA on a roadtrip to FL, plug it into your cousin's Internet, and when you call it will still show your TX phone number as the origin of the call (either directly or via this 800-forwarding silliness) There are even cheap services that let you make outbound calls to the PSTN, without even having an actual line or number - they either send no caller ID, or a number from one of their pools, which could be anywhere, even dozens of states away.
Solution for 'women's shelters': The residents chip in together and get a basic prepaid cellphone. This could be done with coordination of the staff, or without. No name or address ever gets associated with the number. The residents share it to make calls to anyone to whom they do not want to reveal their location. They let the cell's callerID show up, but they turn off the ringer, or block all inbound calls so they go to voicemail. Instruct their 'abusive' husbands that they are sharing a phone and that they must leave a voicemail to reach them, which must state who they are and who they are calling. This also leaves the 'abusive' husband a means to reach his ex, but without knowing where she is.
Solutions for 'people who want to know is calling' - lowtech: screen with an answering machine - hightech - answer if you recognize caller ID, i there is none or you don't recognize it,let it go to voicemail (It is possible for someone you want to talk to to call from a number you don't recognize, or from somewhere that provides no caller id - maybe your bank's antifraud dept is calling you to verify a transaction)
Notwithstanding the right of an adult (including a battered spouse) to withhold their location from another adult (such as the spouse doing the battering,) both parents of a child have the right to know where the *child* is living, until and unless a court says otherwise.
Set your own caller ID (Score:3, Interesting)
Gizmo5.com allows you to pay $4 a year to set your caller ID to whatever you want on outgoing calls, else it's whatever your last call-in number purchased was. I'm a US resident but my last call-in number I got from them was a UK number so every call I make has a caller ID that shows the UK country code and the rest of the numbers. People in U.S. have no clue what that mess of numbers mean and I doubt telemarketers are going to call a UK number to reach me, and if they do they are going to have to navigate my telemarketer-annoyance dialplan in Asterisk.
OK, not for everyone but hey, this is a site for nerds, remember?!
Re:I don't get it ?? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can rejoice. My sister-in-law, who lived with a guy for 15 years, got a restraining order to keep her out of their house (which was entirely in her name). The real nice thing about it was that it was "stealth" he played her for the week before, acting like they might get back together, having dinner with her, even coming over and replacing a flat tire on her car and they had no history of violence in their entire relationship (plus, the guy is like 6'5" 250lbs and she's 5'4 99lbs).
FWIW, one of her sisters was suspicious and had a friend at the courts watching the daily roster of filings (or whatever it is called) and they saw his lawyer schedule the hearing to file the restraining order and so she was able to quickly sell the house to someone else in the family before it was too late.
But hey, at least BOTH sexes are able to abuse the laws now. Equality for all.
Re:Battered Men too (Score:3, Interesting)
Replace "female" with "white", "male" with "black" and "battering" with "mugging". Do you still think you will be able to have a constructive discussion with your customary assumptions?