Ask HN: Chinese spam-calls, anyone know what's going on? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Chinese spam-calls, anyone know what's going on?

12 pointsarikr19 comments

Seems like they've massively ramped up in the past week or so.

The FTC has sent out a warning about these calls targeting the Chinese community pretending to be the embassy.

"The Federal Trade Commission warned this week that mobile spam calls are now targeting the Chinese community in the US, with the robocaller pretending to be from the Chinese Embassy. The messages range from asking the recipient to pick up a package or document from a Chinese Consulate office and offering to exchange yuan to dollars, to the Embassy investigating a fraud and requiring personal information to avoid deportation.

The FTC believes these calls are targeting Chinese immigrants or callers with Chinese last names, but in recent weeks, the practice has reached numbers across the US regardless of who the number is registered to. Like other spam calls, the incoming number appear to be similar to the recipient’s own phone number, or spoofs the Chinese Embassy’s real phone number which begins with (212) 244. In addition to calls, the FTC warns that similar scams may also be targeting users via WeChat"

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/22/17267970/ftc-robot-scam-c...

They are absolutely targeting cities with large Asian populations. It's not random.

This is the breakdown for incoming calls to the Nomorobo honeypot for 4/1/2018-4/23/18 that have called more than one line from 212-244-[0000-9999] (the last 4 digits change frequently, just like regular neighbor spoofing).

Data source: Our honeypot consists of over 300k lines from around the country that people have gotten rid of, mostly due to getting so many robocalls. It's the main weapon that we use to build our blacklist.

  to_npa	to_nxx	calls	lines	city, st
  646	233	1383	642	NEW YORK, NY
  347	218	935	783	BROOKLYN, NY
  415	965	266	266	BOLINAS, CA
  917	563	192	147	NEW YORK, NY
  718	878	176	152	FLUSHING, NY
  617	767	57	56	SOMERVILLE, MA
  562	200	56	56	LONG BEACH, CA
  626	427	50	40	LOS ANGELES, CA
  201	546	44	44	HACKENSACK, NJ
  323	203	19	19	LOS ANGELES, CA
  650	492	19	19	MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA
  832	293	15	13	HOUSTON, TX
  857	488	12	12	BOSTON, MA
  845	262	10	10	SPRING VALLEY, NY
  585	286	10	10	ROCHESTER, NY
  949	393	9	9	MISSION VIEJO, CA
  206	535	9	9	SEATTLE, WA
  267	457	8	8	PHILADELPHIA, PA
  716	989	7	7	BUFFALO, NY
  310	400	7	7	LOS ANGELES, CA
  510	250	7	7	OAKLAND, CA
  516	279	6	6	GARDEN CITY, NY
  929	200	6	5	FLUSHING, NY
  909	214	3	3	ONTARIO, CA
  315	982	3	3	UTICA, NY
  848	260	3	3	METUCHEN, NJ
  908	360	3	3	MILLINGTON, NJ
  301	825	2	2	ROCKVILLE, MD
  212	687	2	2	NEW YORK, NY
  202	813	2	2	WASHINGTON, DC

Apparently, they are ramping up because they’re working, unfortunately: millions of dollars have been scammed from mostly older Chinese immigrants over the past few months as a result of these calls.

No Chinese calls, but I have seen robo calls on my phone which come from similar area code (906)370-xxxx Those happen to be some Bahamas Cruise ones. I wonder how they manage to spoof the number from identical area code.

Edit - grammar

From what I have been able to gather they are using data centers that have fewer qualms with certain activities and installing Asterix PBX's server which they use for the calls.

Spoofing numbers is extremely easy. You can even download mobile apps and do it from your phone.

I'm not sure why telcos don't restrict this to at least verified numbers. But it probably has something to do with interoperability of the world's myriad of different telcos that have to be interoperable.

I had the fascinating experience of sitting in on a high school English class during my time in Beijing. One of the common assignments was to practice speaking by calling American phone numbers that students in the intro programming classes had scraped from the internet. With exams coming up it's possible that students are making phone calls on their own to get practice.

But seriously, what kind of question is this?

Do you have a NYC number? Or is this happening across the US? I've been getting them for a couple of months now and there was just a post on the NYC subreddit the other day talking about it. I thought I was the only one, and since I don't speak Mandarin, I assumed someone just accidentally gave my number to a Chinese business of some sort.

Not OP, but I received one of these calls the other day.

Residing in Toronto, Ontario.

Is it always from the same number? I bet we (Nomorobo) have some recordings that I can dig up.

I googled a number that called me and found a recording from your site: https://www.nomorobo.com/lookup/212-244-9781

No idea what it's saying, and I'm assuming your transcription is just creating garbage by assuming the mandarin is english?

Yep. No idea either. Is this a legit message?

https://www.nomorobo.com/lookup/212-244-9392

I’ll run some stats in a few.

I received one yesterday and I live in New Zealand.

Got a number that they’re calling from? I can check our (Nomorobo) database and see if there’s anything coming through.

Try 212-244-9392 - Chinese consulate in New York, spoofed, of course. http://newyork.china-consulate.org/eng/lqfw/lsbhyxz/t1486921...

This is a recording from their number at the end of last year - https://www.nomorobo.com/lookup/212-244-9392

I’ll run some stats on 212-244 numbers in a few.

I got one of those, and let my Chinese coworker listen to it and tell me what it was about. She got the same call, and when she called the number back (which was the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco), they got mad at her.

I have a 415 number and began receiving these a few weeks ago.

This was happening in SF in November, 2017.

https://sanfranciscopolice.org/article/sfpd-issues-warning-t...

Does anyone else find it troubling that scammers and spammers using spoofed calling numbers are doing to the voice phone system what spammers did to email, and before that, to NNTP? (The "Green Card" spam was 24 years ago.)

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