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Comment by zalew | Hacker News Reader

> I seriously want to see top managers of Russian cell operators in jail.

=> I seriously want to see top managers of every cell operator out there in jail.

FTFY

It's not a Russian problem, google for premium sms and you'll find international tables for countries all around the world. I've heard some providers give clients the option to disable premium sms, too bad it's not a sane default. Also, don't know how it is in the US, but around here premium sms are very popular among live tv shows - vote for your favorite dancer, etc. So it's a hard case to beat when mass media is tied with them.

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It's not just SMS. There's premium numbers, too. It's a fairly neat racket. You get Elbonia Telecom to publish a tariff inside their country that is like $0.50 a minute. They'll make a deal with you to give you, say, 20 cents a minute on all traffic you can generate.

So you go and hack people's PBXes or phones or whatever and call these numbers non-stop and profit handsomely. Careless telecom (VoIP) providers are also good targets, as the updating of these prices is a haphazard operation.

It even happens inside the US. Some local telco (like in Iowa) gets a 7 cent rate published, then puts up free conference calls or whatever to generate traffic.

in Poland a few years ago we had a scammer scheme where they left you a message to call them back. When you called back, they forwarded the call to a US premium number.

If you call them and persuade, they will:

- Refund your money

- Disable everything "premium" (fradulent) forever for your account.

- Legit mobile payments still pass, you will wonder! Just not those evil invisible recurrent account-draining ones.

In short, they understand that their multi-billion-dollar business is a bitch for low scammers and they live with it.

They are in business of defrauding children, elderly and vulnerable people who have better things to do than be careful and track their balance.

People got hang at Nuremberg for less I would say.

>>People got hang at Nuremberg for less I would say.

No.

There were people at Nuremberg who richly deserved hanging and didn't get it. The allies went easy on their best new buddy in the impending cold-war. ( Edit to say what motivated this reply in the first place - You can't compare working people to death in camps with SMS fraud. not anyplace close )

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