From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Nov 20 18:27:57 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iAKNRvn10326; Sat, 20 Nov 2004 18:27:57 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 18:27:57 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200411202327.iAKNRvn10326@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #558 TELECOM Digest Sat, 20 Nov 2004 18:27:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 558 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate (jdj) Re: Should I Put Cell Phone on National do Not Call List? (D. Burstein) Re: Movie Studios to Sue Internet File Traders (Dave Garland) Re: Movie Studios to Sue Internet File Traders (Lee Hollaar) Re: Off-Shore Call Centers (John Schmerold & John Levine email) Re: Somewhat Off Topic But a Must Read (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits (Tony P.) Re: EFF: Anti-Spam Measures Block Free Speech (John Levine) Re: Sears and K-Mart (Stanley Cline) Re: Mystery Phone Number Revisited (John R. Covert) The Pitfalls of VOIP (Lisa Minter) SBC Seeks to Levy Higher Fees on Internet Phone Companies (Lisa Minter) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jdj Subject: Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 21:30:57 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:12:34 -0500, Dan Lanciani wrote: > Interesting. I didn't realize that this was considered a bad thing. There are a lot of people who equate receiving spam to stepping in what the cat leaves on the lawn. It makes them all kinds of upset when someone suggests doing something other than killing received spam. > My filters respond to every (seemingly) spam message with a note > indicating how to bypass the filter if in fact the mail is not spam. > (Actually they do this only once per sender per some months, but you > get the idea.) I really can't just dump (seeming) spam in the bucket > since there are a few false positives. But I get 1500+ spams per day > and I can't look at them all. Chances are that your filters are sending responses to forged addresses. Occasionally I see messages like that and they are treated like spam, since they have nothing to do with me and responding to them is useless. They go to /dev/null. Until it's full. >> There is an added benefit if spam to bad addresses were responded to: >> the bad addresses are confirmed valid and permanently taint the >> databases, which get sold around and the fun starts all over again. > Because of the way my filters are integrated into sendmail they > generate responses for spam sent to bad addresses. I always > considered this a bug (though at least I fixed it to send only one > response to envelopes with multiple bad to: addresses :) but I'm glad > to hear it may do some good. I've noticed lately that spammers will > make many simultaneous connections to my mail server and run through > huge lists of bogus recipients. This was overwhelming my system until > I added a semaphore for spamassassin use and queued most of the > responses. Do they think I'm an ISP or such? I should have made it clear that I was not talking about replying to mail. I meant responding by using the url's in the mail body. Since spammers never use a real From: address replying by mail is useless. Spammers hit every machine with an open smtp port. If your mail server accepts connections and even looks like it relays, it will be on spammer lists as a good relay. They don't care if nothing is actually delivered. >> Should not be too difficult to set up a procmail script for servers to >> send a few http requests to a spammer's website instead of bouncing >> mail with bad addresses. > Hmm. Maybe just send a SYN to each http:// address that can be > extracted from the mail. Though I guess that might not count against > the correct spammer if they are sharing IP addresses. A SYN would do nothing and with multiple SYNs being sent from all over the place it would probably be regarded as a dDOS attack. To be charged for a hit a page must be requested. So sending a SYN would cost the spammer nothing. But perhaps it should not be done. Spammers might get a little upset with all the responses and no one buying a thing. That might be compared to calling a ScumCorp's 800 number just to say "hi" every few minutes or trying an infinite number of times to send a fax or set up a 66baud data connection to said 800 number. Nevermind. It's a bad idea. Could get sued. But it's fun as gedankenspielen. ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: Should I Put Cell Phone on National do Not Call List? Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 05:35:55 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Marcus Didius Falco writes: > Comments: While it's true that the major wireless phone providers > (with the sole exception of Verizon) have announced their intention to > compile a directory of customers' cell phone numbers, it isn't true > that they plan to "publish" said directory for all to see. The numbers > will be made available only if customers opt in, and will be > accessible only by those who call information and pay a fee. Err, not quite. See next comment; > Participating service providers swear the numbers will never be > available to telemarketers. while the actual combined (cellular company telco) directory may be reasonably restricted somehow or other, that does you absolutely NO GOOD if your cellular number is in other databases. Ever stop at East Cupcake Tire Repair and give them your name, address, and cellular number? Guess what. You're now in a searchable record. A very big and highly marketed one. > Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission does allow > http://urbanlegends.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=https://www.donotcall.gov/FAQ/FAQConsumersNew.aspx > worried cell phone users to add their numbers to the National Do Not Call > or by calling 1-888-382-1222 . Good idea. While not perfect (I'm still waiting for the 10,000 volt kickback option to unwanted call makers) the list _does_ significantly reduce the numbers of calls. And, as the cost to comply with it gets higher and higher[a], fewer outgoing call centers will stay in business. [a] unless the telemarketers and their friends get Congress to relax it. And they're certainly trying. > Online registration: www.donotcall.gov _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Movie Studios to Sue Internet File Traders Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 00:15:28 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But many IP addresses are not static, > but dynamic. What do they do then to find the person who 'stole' the > movie or the piece of music? PAT] They subpoena the information from the ISP. ISP logs will usually identify the particular customer. A few ISPs who are concerned with their customers' privacy have made a point of having a very short retention cycle for logs, sufficient for them to deal with abuse, but short enough so that the logs probably will be deleted before outsiders get it together to demand them. Those ISPs are worthy of patronage. ------------------------------ From: hollaar@faith.cs.utah.edu (Lee Hollaar) Subject: Re: Movie Studios to Sue Internet File Traders Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 13:14:38 +0000 (UTC) Organization: University of Utah Computer Science In article bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: > Statutory copyright infringement penalty, $30,000 per occurrence. Each > making of a copy is a separate violation. Not quite right. It's up to $30,000 PER WORK infringed, and up to $150,000 per work if the infringement is willful. The minimum is $750 per work, unless the infringement is completely innocent and then it is $200 per work. But that means that at the minimum for an innocent infringement of "sharing" 1000 songs is $200,000, and there is nothing that the judge can do about it. > As to the prior poster's question regarding jail time -- the answer is > "yes". The "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" _did_ introduce > *criminal* prosecution and penalties for certain kinds of copyright > infringement. In general, the criminal provisions deal with those who > _distribute_, for money or otherwise, infringing copies. Criminal infringement has been part of copyright law for over a century. The DMCA didn't change that. In fact, the only thing the DMCA did regarding criminal infringement is carry it over to the new anticircumvention provisions, with the same penalties. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But many IP addresses are not static, > but dynamic. What do they do then to find the person who 'stole' the > movie or the piece of music? PAT] The request is for the name of the user of the IP address at a specified time. If the ISP does not have that information because there are no logs of IP address assignment, it will indicate that to the court. But a misrepresentation to the court would lead to the ISP being held in contempt, with harsh penalties. Note that the current suits are against people providing movies or songs on the systems, not people who are only downloading them. That makes it easier to get their IP addresses, since it is used to contact the "sharer" to download the material. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 07:42:36 -0600 From: John Schmerold Subject: Re: Off-Shore Call Centers I agree Irish or UK agents are easier to understand than Indian agents OTOH, I have my doubts that it's that much cheaper to setup call centers in Ireland. If we're not successful with our efforts on the contract side perhaps it's time for legislative efforts, as a Libertarian kind of guy, it's the last thing I like to see - Governmental involvement, however the phone companies have exceeded my pain threshold with this call center issue. John Levine wrote: >> I get a written guarantee backed up by penalty fees and contract >> termination rights. This guarantee will stipulate that if I ever get >> transferred to an overseas call center or to a call-center not staffed >> by native US staff, ... > A company I'm associated with moved its tech support call center to > Befast, Northern Ireland some years ago. We've been able to recruit > very well qualified staff and callers have been happy with the > service. It's not as cheap as India (although we did get some UK > government money to set it up), but it's a lot easier to manage. > I suppose it helps that for most Americans, an Irish accent is easier > to understand than an Indian one. What's the solution? I don't shop at Sam's or Wal-mart unless I'm desperate for something I know I can't find anywhere else, or I know there's a 50% price spread. I am fully aware that my friendly Dierberg's, Walgreen's or Kmart is 20% more than Wal-Mart, I'm content with that and happy to pay the money for mental peace of mind. The problem is, when I need SBC DSL support, I have no choice. I can't say "charge me $20 so I don't have to talk to an Indian" John Schmerold Katy Computer Systems, Inc 20 Meramec Station Rd Valley Park MO 63088 636-861-6900 v 775-227-6947 f John R Levine said: >> I agree Irish or UK agents are easier to understand than Indian agents >> OTOH, I have my doubts that it's that much cheaper to setup call centers >> in Ireland. > It's Northern Ireland, which makes a difference. Between the gov't > subsidies and the very reasonable salaries that comp sci grads will > accept, the cost difference is significant. >> If we're not successful with our efforts on the contract side >> perhaps it's time for legislative efforts, as a Libertarian kind of >> guy, > I dunno, I fear it's a cultural thing. The Wal-Mart phenomenon > makes it clear that most Americans will pick lower price over better > quality every time. > I get a written guarantee backed up by penalty fees and contract > termination rights. This guarantee will stipulate that if I ever get > transferred to an overseas call center or to a call-center not staffed > by native US staff, ... A company I'm associated with moved its tech support call center to Befast, Northern Ireland some years ago. We've been able to recruit very well qualified staff and callers have been happy with the service. It's not as cheap as India (although we did get some UK government money to set it up), but it's a lot easier to manage. I suppose it helps that for most Americans, an Irish accent is easier to understand than an Indian one. > What's the solution? Good question. I don't shop at Wal-Mart at all, and my telco's support staff are three blocks from here and know me personally. > The problem is, when I need SBC DSL support, I have no choice. I can't say > "charge me $20 so I don't have to talk to an Indian" I suppose one small step would be to write to your congressbeings and Mike "princeling" Powell to tell them how unhappy you are that they've let the RBOCs monopolize DSL. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do you remember how, many years ago at least, or maybe still, telemarketers always wanted to locate their offices in Omaha, Nebraska? Not only were the phone lines cheaper there than anywhere else when WATS was prevalent (almost no calls had to be made through the most expensive 'Band 6' lines; 'Band 5' went almost everywhere except extremely distant areas) but more important the telemarketers wanted that nice, bland, midwestern accent so the called party knew a 'voice' was speaking to him, but it was impossible to say immediatly *where* the voice was located, or the person's racial makeup without an accent, which white people in the midwest area usually do not have. That's why the telemarketers did not want to locate in the east due to prejudice against 'easterners' by people in the midwest, or against jews or blacks (populous in the eastern states); telemarketers did not want to locate in the south due to prejudice by midwesterners or eastern people against 'southerners' (whose accent would always give them away, etc). They would always say it was hard enough to make sales pitches over the phone without having to overcome the called party's prejudice against black people, Jews, southerners, whatever. So don't even give the called party a chance to think about those factors, just be a 'voice'. That's what made Nebraska in general, and Omaha in particular such a nice place for them; plus which the farmer's wives and daughters tended to work more cheaply and be more honest in rural midwestern areas as Amoco Credit Card found out when they moved their operation from Chicago to a rural area outside of Des Moines, Iowa. I guess the opposite is true where customer service is concerned, however. Now that you have been sold and they have your money, they can quit worrying about what you think either way; go ahead and let customer service be outsourced to India or Japan or Korea. If the housewives and daughters over there cannot understand your problem or you cannot understand their language, then so what; let the customer live with the problem; we already got his money. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 09:38:42 EST Subject: Re: Somewhat Off Topic But a Must Read In a message dated Sat, 20 Nov 2004 02:09:46 +0000, bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: > K-Mart was *never* Kresge's. > K-Mart and Kresge's existed simultaneously. > Yes, K-Mart was owned by the parent of the Kresge's stores -- and > was set up to compete in the 'discount store' niche (i.e. against > _Target_). Kresge's competed against Woolworths, and the other > full-line retail-only (no catalog mail-order/phone-order sales) > department stores. Woolworth's had Woolco discount stores. May Department Stores had Venture. There were other discount chains before them which have disappeared. Target was probably not a principal competitor for K-mart at that time, just one of many competitors in the field. (A Target store in Oklahoma City now occupies the building once used by one of those long-departed chains.) I remember Kresge's as well as K-mart. There was a considerable overlap in merchandise, as there is today between discount stores and the few remaining "five-and-ten cent" stores. Target was not a major player then. The S.S. Kresge Company eventually changed the corporate name to K-mart. Target, originally an operation of Dayton-Hudson Corporation which owned a variety of traditional department stores, became a survivor and profitable ... so profitable that Dayton-Hudson changed its name to Target Corporation and then earlier this year sold off its prestigious department stores and its junior department stores. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And don't forget Bloomingdale's Department Store in New York City. Diner's Club credit card had its origin as the internal store credit department of Bloomingdale's in the 1930-40 era. Alfred Bloomingdale, owner of the department store bearing his name was the first Chairman of the Board of Diner's Club when the two credit functions were split apart around 1950 or so. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 12:29:38 -0500 In article , dold@XReXXWhatX.usenet.us.com says: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There was a K-Mart in >> the complex where Walmart is located; Walmart drove them out of >> business two years ago. > In Napa, California, there was a very old KMart store in a "strip > mall" with a few other stores. The Lucky's grocery store closed when > Alpha Beta bought Lucky's, and they kept a store open a couple of > blocks away. > KMart wanted to expand, opening one of their newer Super-KMarts, > taking over the Lucky's space. Napa said no. They didn't want the > expansion. They wanted another store to move in to Lucky's. > KMart closed the store as too small and too old for their new network. > The other little shops closed without the major draws in the shopping > center. > Six months later, Walmart razed the entire strip mall and built a new > store that encompassed more square footage than the entire complex had > before, and they are the sole store in the complex. > Did Napa make a mistake, and decide to take an offer from Walmart? > Had they already received the offer from Walmart before KMart asked? > I was surprised that Walmart would put a store in Napa, since there > was already one in American Canyon, 14 miles away. Since then, they > have applied for a move of the American Canyon store to a larger > position 3 miles closer to Napa. > Other stores can stay in business, but only in little tiny niches. No > one can compete with Walmart. A new move by Walmart will leave > merchandise in the inventory of the supplier until it is sold. $60 > billion will disappear from Walmart books. This would really be "just > in time". It would never belong to Walmart. It would be sold > directly from the distributor to the consumer at the Walmart checkout. So they're acting as a consignment vendor. How interesting. > I think that is how Amazon.com operates with some of their suppliers, > but they don't have physical control of the item, it remains with the > distributor, who might route it elsewhere. In the Walmart case, it > wouldn't be available for other use by the distributor. > Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Distance between stores is not an issue > for Walmart. In addition to ours here, they have another one in > Coffeyville, and others throughout southeast Kansas. PAT] Distance has nothing to do with location of stores period. In Boston there are two CVS stores directly across the street from each other. Granted, it's a busy street and the reasoning is that people don't have to cross the street to get to CVS. It is all about capturing as much of the market as you can. In article , Wesrock@aol.com says: > Lisa Hancock also noted in her message on this that some corporations > could be quite generous with their money and the one in Chicago in > those days which comes to mind for me was the phone company. During > the early/middle 1960's, Dr. Martin Luther King was a regular guest > preacher both at Chicago Temple on Sunday mornings and at Sunday > Evening Club at Orchestra Hall. I always went to hear him speak and > meet him each time he was in town, usually three or four times per > year. Both at the Chicago Temple and at the Sunday Evening Club they > *always* made a point of printing in the program words to the effect, > "The personal expenses of Dr. and Mrs. King on this visit to Chicago > and the honorarium for his message to us were met with a gift from the > Illinois Bell Telephone Company." And Dr. King did not come cheap as > a speaker, either. Temple paid him five hundred dollars to speak and > I think Sunday Evening Club did the same, always through Illinois Bell > which was a very generous, good corporation. PAT] That was part of the mission of the BOC's at the time. Support the community in order to maintain that protected monopoly status. On the whole, only now am I paying less for voice communications than I did in 1982. Of course I've ditched circuit for packet so that might be part of it. Right now I'm shelling $100 for cable, Internet and phone per month, the phone representing $24.99 of that. I really can't complain as the phone is unlimited local and ld, has ALL the features I want and works fairly well. Cox Communications tends to be generous with the communities they serve. But they have no choice -- they are a protected monopoly to some degree. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Is Cox Communications the same thing as Cox Cable? Assuming that it is, Cox has the southern end of our Montgomery County (Coffeyville, Caney, Tryo and Dearing) while Cable One has Independence, and communities in the north area including Neodesha, Liberty, Sycamore, etc. And Cable One at least is rather generous (or maybe the terms of the franchise make them be generous) in giving Independence *three* cable channels for community use. Channel 10 is general community programming, Channel 14 is for the Independence High School and our Community College, and Channel 22 is for general use by City of Independence for announcements and meetings of the town board, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 20 Nov 2004 06:40:31 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: EFF: Anti-Spam Measures Block Free Speech Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Where does it say that this is the reason why MoveOn.org's mail is > being blocked? Moveon has dreadful list management practices. I've seen lots of cases where they sent mail to addresses that couldn't possibly have signed up, inbound-only role accounts and the like. Although I generally agree with their politics, it's clear to me that they have only themselves to blame for getting into spam lists, and they would do themselves a favor if they'd spend less time spreading conspiracy theories and more time fixing their mail practices. I haven't been able to figure out why the EFF is so totally unable to understand e-mail. I talked to Cindy Cohn at the FTC spam meeting last year and Annalee Newitz at the authentication forum a few weeks ago, and it was quite clear they've learned nothing, and a lot of what they think they know is wrong. Arguments about "every user should have full control over his own inbox" ignore the realities of the way that spam filters work and the substantial extra cost involved were an ISP to provide per-user filtering granulatity. Annalee said she hand sorts 2000 spams a day from her inbox, and apparently believes that this is a productive use of her time. Go figure. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Sears and K-Mart Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 02:25:31 -0500 Organization: Roamer1 Communications Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org On 19 Nov 2004 11:50:34 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > My local carrier, Verizon, is running the same risk of becomming too > distant from the people it serves. Years ago they had business > offices in regions, several throughout a big city. Today when you > call them (they no longer accomodate in-person visits) your call can What's strange is that the lack of walk-in offices is pretty much a Bell/GTE-only thing; practically every phone company that is not one of Verizon, SBC, BellSouth, or Qwest -- *including* the very large multi-state independents like Sprint LTD, ALLTEL, CenturyTel, and Frontier -- has at least some walk-in offices. I wonder what the Bells are so afraid of that non-Bells aren't ... Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 04:30:01 EST From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Mystery Phone Number Revisited Mr. Salvatore Petrarca wrote to the Digest after doing some research into the number 866 383-0986 and finding that it apparently belongs to Media Direct Marketing Consultants in Knoxville. This caused me to review caller id logs for the four lines on which I retain that information (all of which are answered by machines). I noticed that there were three calls from that number, each to different numbers. Mr. Petrarca surmised that spyware might have picked this up. However, since I operate under the firm conviction that "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Windows", and since all of the three numbers are unlisted and are rarely if ever revealed to anyone at all, I don't think that's what's up. Instead, I think that the company behind this number is simply war dialling. I note that tonight it is no longer answering at the Indian shop. Here is a list of all calls from 800 Service numbers with an indication of what I get tonight. 20-FEB-2003 17:09:22.48 Fax 800 379-8414 Reorder 25-SEP-2003 12:03:19.21 Ln1 800 839-5031 DME Telephony Services 26-SEP-2003 19:24:02.84 Ln1 800 839-5031 18-FEB-2004 12:17:26.73 Ln2 866 383-0986 Mystery Phone Number 26-JUN-2004 20:08:56.06 Fax 866 383-0986 14-JUL-2004 19:33:44.81 Ln1 866 383-0986 15-SEP-2004 09:32:00.97 Ln2 800 497-9512 Direct Satellite 15-SEP-2004 10:34:14.52 Fax 800 497-9512 25-OCT-2004 13:55:57.43 Ln3 800 290-7432 AOL 26-OCT-2004 15:21:32.32 Ln3 800 290-7432 27-OCT-2004 15:31:22.90 Ln3 800 290-7432 28-OCT-2004 12:11:19.90 Ln3 800 290-7432 8-NOV-2004 11:59:56.68 Fax 800 682-0393 "Customer Service" None of the calls to the Fax number were faxes. Here is the fax log for those calls: Answered Phone : Thu, Feb 20, 2003 17:09:26 NMBR = 8003798414 Error : -6002, Answered, No Facsimile Machine Responded. Elapsed Time of Transmission : 1 min, 33 sec ....................................................... Answered Phone : Sat, Jun 26, 2004 20:09:00 NMBR = 8663830986 Error : -6002, Answered, No Facsimile Machine Responded. Elapsed Time of Transmission : 1 min, 32 sec ....................................................... Answered Phone : Wed, Sep 15, 2004 10:34:18 NMBR = 8004979512 Error : -6002, Answered, No Facsimile Machine Responded. Elapsed Time of Transmission : 1 min, 33 sec ....................................................... Answered Phone : Mon, Nov 8, 2004 12:00:00 NMBR = 8006820393 Error : -6002, Answered, No Facsimile Machine Responded. Elapsed Time of Transmission : 1 min, 32 sec ....................................................... A further search of the fax log reveals that in every case where I have an 800 service number in the "Received Station Message", the calling fax spammer has sent the call "Out of Area", that is, the 800 number in the station message is not in the caller id. 11-MAR-2003 08:09:03.89 Fax OUT OF AREA Answered Phone : Tue, Mar 11, 2003 08:09:07 Received Station Message : WSREPORT 8662046541 30-JUL-2003 09:37:56.86 Fax OUT OF AREA Answered Phone : Wed, Jul 30, 2003 09:38:00 Received Station Message : 18007307253 18-MAY-2004 07:16:16.63 Fax OUT OF AREA Answered Phone : Tue, May 18, 2004 07:16:20 Received Station Message : 18887623345 6-AUG-2004 07:42:17.69 Fax OUT OF AREA Answered Phone : Fri, Aug 6, 2004 07:42:21 Received Station Message : 18884495207 21-OCT-2004 09:43:19.68 Fax OUT OF AREA Answered Phone : Thu, Oct 21, 2004 09:43:23 Received Station Message : 18884495207 10-NOV-2004 08:40:07.74 Fax OUT OF AREA Answered Phone : Wed, Nov 10, 2004 08:40:11 Received Station Message : 18884495207 /john ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 11:32:50 -0500 Subject: The Pitfalls of VoIP Jack Decker note: Lately the press has been spreading a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about VoIP. I have heard that some phone companies have been known to spend more advertising dollars with publishers and broadcasters that run stories favorable to them, and negative toward any perceived competition. I'm not saying there's any such quid pro quo in the case of this specific story, just that the increase in negative stories about VoIP in the press has me wondering. http://www.komando.com/kolumns_show.asp?showID=8068 The Pitfalls of VoIP by Kim Komando - 11/22/2004 Using your computer and Internet connection to make local and long distance calls has been getting a lot of attention lately. People are enticed by the savings offered by Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and the ability to use a regular telephone. Before you jump on the bandwagon, consider the drawbacks. Most VoIP providers charge a monthly fee of $20 to $30 for unlimited local and long distance calling anywhere in the U.S., and sometimes Canada. You also receive a host of features that would normally cost extra, such as call forwarding, voice mail, caller ID and call waiting. There are enhanced features, too. Many providers will forward your voice mail to an e-mail account. There is a super version of call-forwarding that forwards calls to five or so different phones. It will ring them one at a time or all five simultaneously. Although VoIP is still in its infancy, there are a number of companies providing service, such as AT&T, (http://www.usa.att.com/callvantage/index.jsp), Packet8 (http://www.packet8.net/), VoicePulse (http://www.voicepulse.com/) and Vonage (http://www.vonage.com/). The quality is better than a cell phone and often matches traditional phone service. But there is a potential for dropouts similar to a cell phone. http://www.komando.com/kolumns_show.asp?showID=8068 ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 11:36:26 -0500 Subject: SBC Seeks to Levy Higher Fees On Internet Phone Companies http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200411/msg00226.html Plan Aims to Raise Charges On Local-Network Calls; Bell to Tap Web Market, Too By ANNE MARIE SQUEO Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Even as SBC Communications Inc. announced the broad rollout of its Internet-based phone service, the telecom giant appears to be attempting a regulatory maneuver that would let it levy higher fees on rival Internet phone companies. SBC plans to file a new tariff with the Federal Communications Commission that potentially increases the fees paid by Internet service providers for calls completed on the company's local-phone network. While Internet calls largely avoid the traditional public-telephone network, they do connect to it when the recipient of the call isn't an Internet phone user. The tariff would go into effect immediately, and according to an earlier SBC filing, the company plans to have it in place as soon as tomorrow. The move could mark the first time a regional Bell phone giant has tried to assess higher fees -- traditionally levied on long-distance phone calls -- on Internet phone technologies. The situation has caught the attention of FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a staunch proponent of keeping the emerging Internet phone market free from heavy regulation. Senior FCC officials said Mr. Powell is concerned about the impact of SBC's plans and believes the proposal "may need substantial modifications." 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