Date: Mon Sep 6 18:01:39 1999 From: editor@telecom-digest.org Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #380 To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
TELECOM Digest Mon, 6 Sep 99 21:01:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 380
Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson
Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? (Ed Ellers) Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? (Fred Goldstein) Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? (Syd Barrett) Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? (spam_phree) Re: Fax/Phone Switch With Voicemail (Brian Elfert) Obituary: William Pfeiffer, 44, Radio Web Site Creator (Val Davis)
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From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? Date: 6 Sep 1999 12:28:09 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com
In article <telecom19.378.4@telecom-digest.org>, Steve Uhrig <suhrig@bright.net> wrote:
> Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
>> In article <telecom19.375.6@telecom-digest.org>, Ed Ellers >> ed_ellers@msn.com> wrote:
>>> Callers don't send CID info -- the originating central office does >>> that. My suspicion is that these boiler rooms have T1s *direct to >>> their IXC* for their WATS lines, making caller ID or ANI difficult >>> since the leased lines wouldn't have phone numbers associated with >>> them. (If they had local CO lines they'd have phone numbers for each
>> There's still ANI, which provides the BTN or "billing telephone >> number" associated with the call. The call won't be routed between >> telephone carriers if there's no ANI, and probably won't even be able >> to be routed within a single telco's network.
> ANI does not pass through the entire connection. The terminating > office does not receive any ANI. Since ANI is for billing it does not > need to be passed any farther than the billing tandem office. It is of > no help in tracing an LD call.
"Does not need to" or "is not"? All the GR's I have here (I don't, however, have a copy of the LERG, so if you do, feel free to quote chapter and verse at me about how I'm wrong again) seem to suggest otherwise, as do numerous traces of real SS7 traffic from real LEC networks I've seen. Certainly, when I was doing AIN interoperability work, a substantial concern was that we not allow applications to "lose" the BTN (a real possibility with a malicious or broken AIN application) which was assumed by various elements in the network to always be present.
>> So, basically, whoever said they couldn't trace the calls was lying to >> you. The _can_, they just don't _want to_. I suggest you involve law >> enforcement, and/or file a complaint with your state regulator >> regarding the telco's dishonest response.
> No the telco did not give a dishonest response. They only know which > IXC handled the call and which trunk the call came in on. They have no > originating information at all. I guess they could say the calls are > coming in from MCI or AT&T etc. Call them and ask which one of there > customers is calling and hanging up.
I don't believe this to be correct. Normal SS7 signaling preserves this information across carrier boundaries, as does Equal Access Multi Frequency signaling. If you're suggesting that this is not the case, I'd like a concrete example, please.
>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: See my reply above to Bruce Wilson. >> Yes, you can get law enforcement involved, and in doing so, you >> force telco's hand and get them involved also with a trap placed >> on your line to register ncoming calls, etc.
> You will have a very hard time getting law enforcement involved with > this type of call. If he goes to the police and asks them to have > these calls traced so he can get some money from a telemarketer, they > may arrest him. There are no threats made just someone hanging up when
Oh, may they? Why, exactly? Care to give another concrete example?
> he answers. Even if they did request a trace from the phone
Repeated hangup calls are certainly within the definition of harassment of my local police department (the NYPD) though a larger problem here is that they basically don't have time to care about harassing phone calls at all. Shame, isn't it?
> company. They will get the same response as the original poster. The > call is not traceable under any normal or reasonable condition. I have > never had a law enforcement agency argue with me yet when I tell them > the call could not be traced.
Of course not -- I'm sure they're glad to not have the work to do. Who's the last cop you met who had a lot of free time on his hands?
[snip]
> If it were a case of national security the NSA could tell in about a > minute were the calls were coming from. There may be hope. As soon as
Oh? How, pray tell? They can't have access to information that's not there -- so if your assertion that the calling party address is not preserved in intercarrier signaling is correct, this one's very probably false, and vice versa.
Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com "And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?"
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From: Ed Ellers <ed_ellers@msn.com> Subject: Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 13:44:35 -0400
PAT, the TELECOM Digest Editor wrote in reply:
> Where this can occassionally go sour is that you have to agree in > writing to prosecute first, **regardless of the trap results and > before you are even entitled to know the results of the trap**. Now if > the trap results show that ex-spouse is charting your whereabouts each > day so s/he can show up at your home in the middle of the night and > kill you all while you are in bed asleep, then yes, I think you would > want to get the police involved and see what they think about all > that. On the other hand, what if it is merely a neighbor with a minor > grudge, or a child you know or who perhaps is related to you? Or > someone you consider a close friend but who has some sort of mental > illness or delusion or fantasy or whatever; the kind of person you > would prefer to deal with quietly on your own. Police don't have > options available like that."
I can think of another reason for this policy -- what if someone found out that the harassing caller was someone he knew and decided to "deal with (him/her) quietly on (his) own" with, say, a .357 Magnum? Police and telcos wouldn't appreciate at all being used for such a purpose.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, precisely. Telco tries to keep out of the middle of those things, for very good reason. They'll produce their records when ordered by the court to do so, for example with a search warrant, but no one can then say then no one can say that telco was responsible for something as a result of someone getting 'spied on'. It is a pretty good policy, IMO, even though it does present problems for the 'casual investigator' who would like to make a few short-cuts in order to get what information is needed for one reason or another. PAT]
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Subject: Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? Organzation: Excelsior Computer Services From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Date: Mon, 06 Sep 1999 19:20:50 GMT
> My wife's become increasingly upset (and suspicious of what I might be > doing behind her back) by the frequency of hang-up calls at home > during the day. I suggested using *69 to trace them, but she says > "The number dialed cannot be reached." (We don't have caller ID.) > [...]
> I think what you would have to do therefore is get an 800 number from > a carrier who is equippd to provide real-time ANI -- and it won't > be an inexpensive proposition -- have that line turned on, then have > your existing number automatically forwarded to the 800 number. If
If this would work, it sounds like it would be a good business opportunity. Some 800 carrier could, for a fee, offer to let you forward your number to their line, and record the ANI data for you. They could either route the calls into voice mail, or forward them on to yet another phone.
Last year I started getting fax calls 24hour/day all from unkonwn sources. I would have been very happy to spend a few dollars to find out who was doing this to me.
Joel
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Date: Sun, 05 Sep 1999 09:53:53 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein <fgoldstein@wn.net> Subject: Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"?
At 05:47 PM 9/5/1999 -0400, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to a query about not getting Caller ID:
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I may be wrong and will stand corrected > if I am, but I believe your only absolute entitlement to ANI comes > when you are paying for the calls, ie. the calls arrive on an 800 > number. If you have an 800 number, you are entitled to ANI both in the > form of a monthly printout of same with your phone bill, and/or 'real > time' ANI when the number is delivered with each call perhaps on a > caller-id display box.
So far so good.
> I think what you would have to do therefore is get an 800 number from > a carrier who is equipped to provide real-time ANI -- and it won't > be an inexpensive proposition -- have that line turned on, then have > your existing number automatically forwarded to the 800 number. If > you simply have your existing number intercepted with an announcement > that 'calls are being taken by 800-xxx-xxxx' my thinking is that > certain people may grow suspicious and not call. You do not want that; > you want to quietly lure them into calling and exposing themselves > to you.
Uh, no. ISTM that a key difference between ANI and Caller ID, besides the billing vs. other number that might show up, is that with caller ID, you get the *originating* number for a forwarded call, since that's the caller, but with ANI, you get the *forwarding* number. That's the party calling the 800 number. So if old Anonymous calls a ABC-DEFG which is forwarded to 800-XYX-YZZY, then the ANI on the 800 call will be ABC-DEFG.
After all, Anonymous is paying for a call to ABC-DEFG, and that number is reverse-charge calling the 800 number. Besides, if this subterfuge had worked, the whole *67 compromise would have been unacceptable, as those dastardly pizza shops and other alleged privacy violators could have done as you suggested.
Trap'n'trace, turned on by the telco, should get the ANI of incoming calls. But of course they don't take that very lightly. They do that for people with badges, not annoyed civilians.
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Reply-To: Syd Barrett From: Syd Barrett Subject: Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? Date: Mon, 06 Sep 1999 01:02:50 GMT Organization: @Home Network
<Spam_Phree@removedis.yahoo.com> wrote in message news:telecom19. 372.1@telecom-digest.org:
> Today, I stumbled across a FAQ that reveals the probability that the > majority of these calls are coming from a telemarketer's predictive > dialing machines.
And what's even more nefarious is that these bozos are calling *me* at 4am. Every other day for the past couple of months, I'll be disturbed from slumber, and dial *69 (don't yet have CID). I'll hear a couple of rings and then the message I'll get says the following: 'The caller is outside the calling area in which this service is offered, or wishes to remain anonymous. No further information is available.' *Click!* Is there any way I can file harassment charges, since I deem being awakened at 4 in the morning harassment?
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From: spam_phree@nospam.yahoo.com (Spam Phree) Subject: Re: Tracing Hang Up Calls From "Out of Area"? Date: Mon, 06 Sep 1999 19:04:46 GMT
You are being very myopic and perhaps in collusion with the telemarketing industry.
These "predictive dialers" have an "acceptable abandoned call rate" or 3-7%. On average, these telmarketers are open 10 hours a day, seven days a week, making 400,000 calls a month.
Thats a lot of hang ups. It is harassing. I get one hang up a day now, on average. Each call lacks caller ID info, and the ones I do get to answer are telemarketers.
The practice of abandoning an "initiated" telemarketing call without identifying the name of the caller and their phone and address is a violation of law under 47 USC 227, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) and its implementing regulation 47 CFR 64.1200(e)(2)(iv).
This is a fact, it has been proven over and over in court and I do not care to argue this point.
If someone is breaking the law, the RBOC should investigate. If you had your way, the RBOC should be able to *lie* without consequence about their ability to trace, and I am wrong for not bending over and tolerating the violation of law and the interruption of my privacy.
BTW, I am making more than a few hundred dollars when I settle or get a judgment. The law cited specifically allows for triple damages when the telemarketer intentionally violates the law.
The telemarketers association is on record as publicly stating that a "3.5% abandoned call rate and resulting legal claims are acceptable" for the amount of profits bilked from wherever they get their profits from (i.e. senior citizens, et al)
I will not give up trying to stop the calls as you intimate I should. The calls are just as harassing and taxing as threatening calls.
I will keep the group posted. I would still appreciate any suggestions on how to get the phone company to work with me. I have already received help from the group that identifies the outgoing lines as T3 or DS3 that bypass the telemarketers RBOC and go right to a long distance Compamy. I have also received the specs and laws concerning their ability and requirement to identify the calls as to thier origin.
Thanks to all that have helped.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Please do keep us posted on your results. I imagine everyone will be interested. To my way of thinking, telemarketers and spammers are about the same in their lack of morals and ethics. Both deserve severe punishment when caught. PAT]
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Subject: Re: Fax/Phone Switch With Voicemail From: belfert@foshay.citilink.com (Brian Elfert) Date: Mon, 06 Sep 1999 13:58:56 GMT
blw1540@aol.comxxnospam (Bruce Wilson) writes:
> I'm having trouble understanding how such a CPE switch could work with > telco voice mail and how that one apparently did.
> It seems activation of telco voice mail depends on either line busy or > failure to answer within the specified number of rings; and the > switch's going off-hook would preclude the latter unless it were able > to fool the CO into thinking it hadn't gone off-hook until either > connected fax or phone went off-hook.
I don't know how that particular fax/phone switch worked with telco voicemail, but it did work all the same. You're right that it shouldn't work.
Brian
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Date: Mon, 06 Sep 1999 12:53:48 -0500 From: Val Davis <vdavis@nerds.com> Subject: Obituary: William Pfeiffer, 44, Radio Web Site Creator
http://www.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisStory=80898735
Obituaries: William Pfeiffer, 44, radio Web site creator Lucy Y. Her / Star Tribune
William Pfeiffer, the creator, editor and moderator of the newsgroup rec.radio.broadcasting and its companion Web site http://www.airwaves.com died in a car crash Wednesday in Apple Valley. He was 44.
He was delivering pizza for Pizza Hut in Rosemount about 6:40 p.m. whe n his car collided with another at 140th St. and 140th Path, said his fiancee, Cindy Freeman of Milwaukee.
Pfeiffer started the newsgroup in 1991 while living in Springfield, Mo.
"He had a love of radio unlike anybody I have ever known," said Kent Peterson, a cameraman for KMSP-TV (Channel 9), in the Twin Cities. He had been logging on to the newsgroup since 1992.
Peterson said Pfeiffer started the newsgroup to help improve radio. "He felt he succeeded, but it was a project that will be never completed," he said. "Radio will never be completed. Bill wanted to make it as close to perfection as possible."
Radio was Pfeiffer's passion, Peterson said. Both men helped author a rulemaking proposal to the Federal Communication Commission that would allow the creation of new regulations to allow low-power broadcast serv ice for small communit-based stations. The proposal is in the approval stage, Peterson said. "It was one of the many things Bill was very excited about."
Alan Freed, of Beat Radio in Minneapolis, met Pfeiffer through the new sgroup. They had a professional relationship through the Internet for two years before meeting in 1997.
"He was an intelligent, well-spoken and passionate person in what he was doing," Freed said. "He was a pioneer."
In December 1996, Pfeiffer was living with his mother in Springfield, when a fire destroyed their home. His mother died shortly afterward and Pfeiffer's collection of airchecks and radio paraphernalia were ruined. He later moved to Milwaukee to start over in radio, and then moved to Northfield, Minn., in 1998 to work for KYMN (1080 AM) for five months.
Besides the Web site and newsgroup, Pfeiffer was a pizza deliverer, a Web-page designer and a disc jockey for Midwest Sound and Light in Minnea polis. He also often volunteered to teach children how to use computers, said Val Davis of Emmetsburg, Iowa, another friend whom Pfeiffer met through rec.radio.broadcasting.
Pfeiffer grew up in Chicago, where he often spent his evenings trying to tune into distant stations, Davis said.
"He always was into the technical side of radio, like who was on the radio and where," he said.
Freeman, who met Pfeiffer 10 years ago, said she was attracted to his personality. They had been engaged for only a few weeks and had planned to get married next summer.
"He was very forthright, and he was always buildingme up," she said. "He taught me what I know about Web design and computers. I love Bill, and [his death will] leave an empty space in my life for a long time."
Services are pending.
Copyright 1999 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At the present time, Minnesota authorities are attempting to locate any 'next of kin' who wish to claim his remains or any of his possessions, which were few. He had one sister, whose whereabouts are unknown, and a father who may or may not be alive. A to his location, Bill once commented in a personal discussion, 'I do not know and do not care to know.' His body remains in the custody of the coroner's office pending someone claiming it.
Of all the times we met socially over the years, the one that stands out more clearly than any in my mind was Thanksgiving Day, 1980. I invited Bill and his mom to be my guest for dinner that day. We went to Berghoff's in downtown Chicago, and after dinner as I was taking them back home in a cab, Mrs. Pfieffer reached in a bag she was carrying and handed me a pair of mittens she had made on her sewing machine at home. She had made a pair for Bill to wear in the winter, and wanted me to have a pair also. Such a happy little family they were, the two of them. She was in her late sixties then, and Bill was about 23 or 24 years old, and delivering pizzas on the occassions when he had a car that would run. I miss them both. PAT]
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End of TELECOM Digest V19 #380 ******************************