Ask Slashdot: How To Track a Skype Account Hijacker?

An anonymous reader writes "My Skype account was hijacked, which I discovered after Skype suspended it for suspicious activity, including a number of paid calls and an attempt to debit my card. Now that I've secured the account again, I can see the call history — there are several numbers called in Senegal, Mali, Benin and Philippines. Obviously I could call them myself and create a bit of havoc in their lives, but ideally I'd like to trace the hijacker himself — perhaps with some kind of 'social engineering' approach. Or is it just a waste of time?" How would you do this, and would you bother?

get their ip

[ZeroNullVoid]

Set the password back to what they knew, wait for them to login and hijack it (another account friended) and use one of the sites that use the debug version of skype to obtain their ip.  Then contact the ISP and say that either this illegally hijacking accounts or their IP/systems have been compromised.  Don't forget to disassociate any cards prior.

voip fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

The account was possibly being used for voip fraud. Voip fraud is typically the practice of hijacking a VOIP account (sip/skype) and then calling some foreign country exchange that has a stupid high per minute rate (that the called party gets a cut of). The called party is usually in on the scam but good luck getting any realistic amount of cooperation due to local corruption at the called party end (almost always third world countries).

Re:You're a fucking idiot

[macraig]

The last time I checked the Philippines was an island chain, not a territory in Africa. Don't you just sound credible?

Re:Use better logic

[AHuxley]

Yes, in Australia a "Bell" public phone would be taken over and a line of people would form to make at the time very expensive international calls.
This might be the same digital effort - an account with 'cash' is passed/sold around until it fails.

Dont get involved.

[Anonymous Coward]

The hacker may have been involved in drug smuggling or terrorism or what not. Do not get involved. Be happy you got your Skype account back and move on.

I did this

[hduff]

My cellphone was stolen from my car and then recovered (it was found in the middle of the street). I called the long-distance numbers, pretending that I found the phone and wanted to return it to the owner. The people called (teenagers) were surprisingly helpful and I got the name and local address of the teen that called them who was staying with his uncle. I turned the info over to the police who told me that the loss was actually incurred by the phone company (charges had been refunded) and I was not "harmed" so there were no charges to press, plus the kid could claim that he "found" the phone and did not break into my car. But the detective did talk to the uncle and told me he thought the uncle was going to beat the kid's ass and send him back to Louisiana since the kid had been a problem since he got here. Good enough for me whether true or not since it was all that could really be done.