India’s Call-Center Talents Put to a Criminal Use: Swindling Americans | Hacker News Reader

India’s Call-Center Talents Put to a Criminal Use: Swindling Americans

nytimes.com

38 pointsflippyhead52 comments

For many of us it can be hard to imagine what kind of gullible dweebs go for this. The other week I was quite surprised to learn from family that my father had given money to one of these scams (the "you have computer virus" variation). This is the man who brought our first personal computer home in the early 80s, got me set up with BASIC, still keeps his Fortran code around, i.e. not technically illiterate by any means. But you know what? He's in his 80s, and though he doesn't show any signs of dementia/senility/Alzheimer's, he just doesn't have the energy and interest to keep up with all this stuff anymore, and at his age he's used to getting a lot of _legitimate_ calls from strangers working at doctors' offices, benefits agencies etc. The same man who taught me to be overly paranoid about anything a stranger asks of you now doesn't have the willpower to see through these scams - why yes, his 7-year-old malware-riddled Windows PC sure does seem like it could have a virus, and this seems like oh just a business trying to profit by cleaning your computer for you, and if they can manage it where all these anti-virus companies have failed him then great! We're really in an era where extracting money from old people has never been easier.

My dad is technically illiterate but all he needs is a web browser so I got him a Chromebook. It is more than enough for most people and if Google can keep it malware free it is a big accomplishment.

I think that scam is particularly effective because they use gotomeeting, or similar software, to remotely control the victim's PC and then actually go through a scripted tech support session eventually running phony antivirus software which displays to the victim that there is a plethora of viruses/trojans/malware installed on the PC.

For someone who has never had someone remotely control their PC, they most definitely seem like legitimate Microsoft tech support agents. I would imagine that would fool the vast majority of people sadly.

There's been at least one small study of a fairly specific part of the brain is damaged by aging and causes older people to become more credulous.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120816121836.h...

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=64569896131361918...

"If they reached a person who was sufficiently terrified or gullible — this was known in the business as a “sale” — they would instruct that person to buy thousands of dollars’ worth of iTunes cards to avoid prosecution, they said…”

Fascinating story but how is it that people believe their government accepts payments in iTunes gift cards?

The money transfers also referenced in the article sound a little more legitimate (though still not sounding kosher) but is there some reason to believe that a US government agency would ever ask for payment in anything other than dollars?

That was my first thought. That said, it sounds like they may be targeting first generation immigrants, and their successes come when they get through to someone who's not very familiar with US norms, and perhaps rather more familiar with the concept that problems sometimes go away after making illegitimate payments in unconventional ways to officials.

My second thought was to wonder how purchases and redemptions of thousands of dollars worth of iTunes gift cards managed not to be flagged up by Apple, bearing in my there's certainly enough money flowing through their systems for law enforcement to be very interested in monitoring their compliance with KYC/AML regulations?

They're probably just reselling the cards. No need for anyone to buy digital assets from Apple.

eventually someone needs to buy digital assets from apple for the cards to be worth anything

Not if a large enough group of people is willing to accept iTunes gift cards as payment.

As long as they are a token that is sufficiently expensive to get hold of, I don't see why an economy can't work even if nobody ever spends them with Apple. It'd be like an economy based on gold coins in which nobody ever melts the coins down for their value as raw gold.

My understanding is that the real bottleneck is that if you want to buy iTunes gift cards in large denominations you have to go to Apple or a reputable retailer and specifically ask the vendor to put up to $500 on the card and charge it to you. If you're doing that several times in a row to it probably ought to raise a flag with Apple, the vendor or possibly your bank.

Relative to cash or gold, the token also has the not insignificant problem that it's time limited and can be secretly spent or voided, which should result in the card being substantially discounted (and checked for validity with Apple) each time it changes hands. It's also officially "not for resale"...

They'll be sold in small quantities to deal hunters on places like eBay, which will then be used like any other gift card.

If you want to save a bit of money, you can find gift cards for all sorts of gift card on eBay for a bit of a discount. Lots of this activity is legitimate, with the cards being sold by people who got the cards as a gift but would rather have a somewhat smaller amount of cash. Scammers can just hop right in to this market.

I think they don't really do much in the way of targeting. I get a couple of these fake IRS calls every week.

Off-topic: I've noticed in the past few years that many call center workers have a new, distinct sort of accent and cadence. I don't think this is just a change in the language demographics of the workers because (1) I can still usually distinguish Indian speakers, although I could be wrong, and (2) it's really a different shared cadence rather than just different sounds.

Has there been any systematic change in how the language training for call center workers is done?

It's unfortunate that such a scheme exists, which pollutes the youth of the nation. I too received several calls from an "unknown" number trying to extort money by having me install some anti-virus software to fix a non-existent computer issue.

I'd really love to have a uBlock Origin/AdBlock type of program to maintain my phone's calling number blacklist.

eg: If more than X Android users block a number it should block automatically for everyone.

Guessing the blacklist must not be accessible via the Android/iOS APIs or this would already exist.

This kind of scam, though, works just fine if they change their phone number every day, hour, or minute...and with VOIP, there's little added cost or complexity to do so.

There really needs to be something for phone numbers similar to rfc2827 for ip spoofing. Or, better still, a reliable way to map a phone number to a legal entity.

iOS 10 added APIs for this functionality, but it's probably of limited use since the shadiest scammers can very easily spoof caller ID.

>>>> eg: If more than X Android users block a number it should block automatically for everyone.

Apps like Truecaller[0] have this functionality.

[0] https://www.truecaller.com/services/truecaller

On Nexus/Pixel phones the Google dialer app seems to do this. Many calls for me now show up as "suspected spam caller" and after I answer a call from a number I've never seen before the phone asks "was that spam?".

There is: Truecaller

Normally I tell these guys I'm with the National Terrorist Tracking Center and we've determined they are a terrorist, etc. The last time I decided to change it up a bit and went with, "What are you wearing?" etc. On speakerphone. With my wife listening. Well, wife now. We were in the parking lot of her hair salon having her hair done for our wedding. We have a similar sense of humor. You'd think by now I'd be on their do-not-call list.

I've listened to enough of these calls on youtube to realize most of these scammers think they're untouchable (and surely have been for several years) so unfortunately I doubt telling them you're from a terrorist tracking center will have any impact :)

While not an Indian scam, I was getting tons of calls for the vacation package scam for months from random phone numbers. If you're not familiar with it, they basically say "You've one of the following: A brand new SUV, and HD TV, or a vacation package! Just come to our office to find out what you won". I'm sure it's blatantly obvious to HN readers that you haven't won any prize and instead they'll try to sell you on the vacation package, but this one bothered me because it fooled my parents. I did eventually get them to stop calling me, but the contents of those calls aren't exactly HN worthy :/

Anyone who gets a lot of this crap in your phone, I recommend TrueCaller. Been a lifesaver, gets probably 19/20 of the scam and spam calls (at least for me, YMMV).

I got one of these WAY back in the day from some doofus saying he was from the FBI and he was outside my house. Yeah...no cars out there for 2 miles in any direction, told him he was a bloody idiot and hung up. He actually called back and tried to get me going again! Gotta give him points for determination.

The call center might be indian, but the guy making most of the money is always an American. The people making these calls are reading of a script and entering data into a database. This script and the numbers are provided by an American client - and some of that is legal outbound marketing also. Looking at the script, it is non trivial for any agent to know whether it is legal or not.

More high paying American jobs going overseas :(

In a serious note; I'm from a country where reputation is king and a handshake seals a deal so I was not used to the shadyness I experienced living in the US. Homeless people with made up stories, used car salesmen hiding serious flaw in their cars, hidden charges and fees on services, optional insurance that isn't optional, worthless employee stock options, bank accounts secretly opened with forced overdrafts, online universities, kickstarter, financial services, HMOs, Haitian charities, lobbyists, housing bubble, tech bubble etc. etc. The point is that the US has plenty of home grown 'scams' and the only thing happening here is that otherwise marginal scams are profitable enough for Indias. It's like worrying about losing $100 to muggers on a street while your pension is being eaten up by fees.

I'm not saying don't worry about the small stuff, what I am saying is that, to me, I see the US as the mecha of frauds.

>I see the US as the mecha of frauds

Oh god, I'm imagining a fraud-based Gundam now, thanks.

FYI, you want 'Mecca' in this context. A 'mecha' is typically a reference to giant robots, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecha

Although not a scam like this, my parents were tricked into buying an "antivirus" product from a phone call from India. The whole thing was a little bizarre as it wasn't an outright scam. I never got to see the program in working order but I believe it was an actual attempt at creating a real AV product, although probably bundled with spy/malware. By the time they asked me for help their laptop running Windows Vista was riddled startup errors, most referring to non-existing registry entries. My only guess is that the "company" or whatever it was hit some sort of kill switch, leaving their software in a broken state. It took me a while to clean everything up. In the end I think my parents spent a few hundred dollars on the product and nothing suspicious ever happened with their bank account.

Relatedly, anyone know how/why the Do Not Call Registry has become totally useless? I get probably 10+ spam calls a week now, often for business loans and such (I don't own a business). It's made phone calls the worst way (most likely to be ignored for a long time, or missed entirely) to get in touch with me.

Just confirmed, my number's on it and has been since '04. I get about as many junk calls as I did pre-registry now, though it worked really well for the first ~8 years.

Cheap, unregulated IP telephony and disposable phone numbers have made it easy to spam phones, unfortunately.

Seems like a good use for predator drones.

Yes, I am kidding.

Plus the ability to spoof caller ID with almost no chance of being caught.

This Slate article has an ideological axe to grind (it's amazing what can be politicized...), but has useful info.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_bills/2016/05/rob...

Here's some coverage of the situation in Canada:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crtc-do-not-call-list-telema...

You should be able to forbid incoming calls from certain countries on your line. Or international calls at all.

This would be very useful for grandparents. Why isn't this a thing yet?

because VOIP will get around that.

Yes, but it will increase the cost to the scammers and filter out the ones that can't figure it out.

Possibly have a reroute rather than a block so it's harder to detect. Reroute the calls to a voice mailbox that essentially saves to /dev/null.

Can you reroute to a pay service? So every time they call you they get dinged?

It is surprising US gov does not take this seriously and has not worked with Indian govt to stop these fraudulent organizations. The main players in the scam from Ahmedabad has not been caught as per the report. Also I am happy and slightly worried that the 2 boys who informed trade commission has come out in the open. It is better to be anonymous when you report such things especially if you are in India.

In this podcast the host records a call with one of these IRS scams.

http://tomwoods.com/ep-729-the-real-story-of-the-epipen-fias...

Starts at 11:58. It's quite entertaining.

You can safely replace Americans with 'citizens of any non 3rd world country'.

Only my +1 numbers get these calls.

Nope, it's mostly people in the US that fear their governments like that.

I don't see anyone from Finland, Iceland, or Holand falling for this sort of thing (language barriers aside), because they don't run around scared of the government.

It's s/government/Microsoft/ in those countries.

Perhaps that shows that people expect Windows to break in strange ways and are afraid of what Microsoft might do ;)

If you read the article the IRS scam is just one of several common scams that Indian call centers perform. I would imagine the Microsoft tech support scam is much larger than the IRS scam and has global reach.

Edit: If you want to be amused there's plenty of youtube videos of people toying with the scammers using VM's.

It seems scammers are targeting first generation immigrants to US more than anyone else. Now - as a immigrant myself I can imagine how traumatic it can be to get call from IRS when you don't know your way around tax system.

Obviously - people on HN are an exception but often times - life of an immigrant hangs by a thread - "there is an EAD renewal coming up in Feb if it doesn't get approved (for some reason), you lose your job, lose your home, may even have to go back to your home country".

I was thinking the same thing. We have been conditioned in the US to fear the government to such degree (the IRS in particular) that it makes these calls seem plausible and frightening to the more vulnerable segment of the population.

Just you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

There was actually a big tv report *in hoLLand on this matter, the reporter travelling to india and facing his fraudulent callcenter contact... so please don't just write things you think are true.

It's a bit harder to recruit people who speak Japanese in India to call center jobs...

And even marks in countries that speak good English (Sweden) aren't going to fall for a scam call that is made in English (this is the Swedish tax agency, apparently we can't speak Swedish though)

One of the great things about living in a non-English speaking country is that they are unable to outsource their support phone line. Also helps with incoming scams.

Perhaps the English-speaking ones, but Indian call-center talent won't be nearly so plentiful for targeting, say, France or Sweden.

We used to get call center calls from India to our U.K. number, but then they where insurance scams of some type. "There has been a traffic accident on your street involving your car..." at a time when I didn't have a car. I would tell them and I kept getting the calls every couple of months.

Indian version of the Nigerian 419.

What's the India's governments postion on this?

I don't think a govt would have any position on this. The law enforcement agencies are actively working on tracking and finding out these people which is how this came into limelight.

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