May 26 2023

Phone scamming kingpin gets 13 years for running “iSpoof” service

Category: Mobile SecurityDISC @ 9:00 am

In November 2022, we wrote about a multi-country takedown against a Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) system known as iSpoof.

Although iSpoof advertised openly for business on a non-darkweb site, reachable with a regular browser via a non-onion domain name, and even though using its services might technically have been legal in your country (if you’re a lawyer, we’d love to hear your opinion on that issue once you’ve seen the historical website screenshots below)…

…a UK court had no doubt that the iSpoof system was implemented with life-ruining, money-draining malfeasance in mind.

The site’s kingpin, Tejay Fletcher, 35, of London, was given a prison sentence of well over a decade to reflect that fact.

Show any number you like

Until November 2022, when the domain was taken down after a seizure warrant was issued to US law enforcement, the site’s main page looked something like this:

You can show any number you wish on call display, essentially faking your caller ID.

And an explanatory section further down the page made it pretty clear that the service wasn’t merely there to enhance your own privacy, but to help you mislead the people you were calling:

Get the ability to change what someone sees on their caller ID display when they receive a phone call from you. They’ll never know it was you! You can pick any number you want before you call. Your opposite will be thinking you’re someone else. It’s easy and works on every phone worldwide!

In case you were still in any doubt about how you could use iSpoof to help you rip off unsuspecting victims, here’s the site’s own marketing video, provided courtesy of the Metropolitan Police (better known as “the Met”) in London, UK:

As you will see below, and in our previous coverage of this story, iSpoof users weren’t actually anonymous at all.

More than 50,000 users of the service have been identified already, with close to 200 people already arrested and under investigation in the UK alone.

Tags: Phone scams


Aug 16 2021

Copyright scammers turn to phone numbers instead of web links

Category: Smart Phone,Social networkDISC @ 9:41 am

Copyright scams aren’t new – we’ve written about them many times in recent years.

These scammers often target your Facebook or Instagram account, fraudulently claiming that someone has registered a complaint about content that you’ve posted, such as a photo, and telling you that you need to resolve the issue in order to avoid getting locked out of your account.

The problem with copyright infringement notices is that if they’re genuine, they can’t just be ignored, because social media sites are obliged to try to resolve meaningful copyright complaints when they’re received.

To discourage bogus complaints and reduce harrassment – and if you are a content producer or influencer yourself, with an active blog, video or social media account, you will probably have had many well-meaning but ill-informed complaints in your time – sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like don’t put the complainant directly in touch with you.

The process usually goes something like this:

  • The complainant makes their claim to the service provider concerned. The service provider expects them to give full contact details, in order to discourage anonymous harasssment.
  • If the claim seems to hold water, the service alerts you, without giving your details to the complainant, and invites you to defend or to accept the complaint. (Obviously bogus claims, such as complaints about an images or video content in an article that is all text, shouldn’t go any further.)
  • If the claim is incorrect, you can repudiate it, for example by stating that you took a photo yourself or by showing a licence you acquired for a music clip.
  • If you don’t wish to contest the claim, you are usually expected to remove the allegedly infringing material promptly, and report that you have done so.

In either case, assuming that the service provider considers the case resolved, it’s then closed without the complainant getting to contact you directly, and without you needing to deal directly with the complainant in return.

Scam Me If You Can: Simple Strategies to Outsmart Today’s Rip-off Artists

Tags: Copyright scammers, Phone scams, Scam Me If You Can