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Message Digest Volume 29 : Issue 63 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Re: NYS "bill" in works to outlaw phone ID spoofing Re: NYS "bill" in works to outlaw phone ID spoofing Re: NYS "bill" in works to outlaw phone ID spoofing Re: Need minor part for 2500 phone Re: Need minor part for 2500 phone Re: NYS "bill" in works to outlaw phone ID spoofing Re: Clueless Woman Calls Tech Show When Her Stolen Wi-Fi Disappears Re: Clueless Woman Calls Tech Show When Her Stolen Wi-Fi Disappears Re: Clueless Woman Calls Tech Show When Her Stolen Wi-Fi Disappears The perfect Telecom conversation piece Re: The perfect Telecom conversation piece Re: NYS "bill" in works to outlaw phone ID spoofing Re: More about 5E remote from Catalina Island to the SoCal mainland ====== 28 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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, and other stuff of interest. Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:48:24 -0500 From: tlvp <tPlOvUBpErLeLsEs@hotmail.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: NYS "bill" in works to outlaw phone ID spoofing Message-ID: <hmkm62$6f4$1@news.eternal-september.org> Thad Floryan wrote: > On 2/28/2010 8:17 PM, danny burstein wrote: >> [Queens Chronicle] >> >> Penalties for phone spoofers a possibility >> >> rest: >> http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20412517&BRD=2731&PAG=461&dept_id=574905&rfi=6 > > Missing from that article (and every other similar one I've seen over the > years) is: HOW is the phone spoofer actually identified and caught? Also missing is any explanation for why it's the caller, and not the switch at the caller's CO, with the capability to determine what to send as caller-ID. To put it another way, why should Caller-ID, ANI, and CNID not all be the same, and un-spoofable by the calling party? Cheers, -- tlvp Date: 3 Mar 2010 15:51:45 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: NYS "bill" in works to outlaw phone ID spoofing Message-ID: <20100303155145.34908.qmail@simone.iecc.com> >> Missing from that article (and every other similar one I've seen over the >> years) is: HOW is the phone spoofer actually identified and caught? How about answering the call, recording it, and getting them to say who they are? > To put it another way, why should Caller-ID, ANI, and CNID not all > be the same, and un-spoofable by the calling party? Caller-ID and CNID are the same thing. ANI can legitimately be different, with the usual example being a call from a PBX with ANI of the main billing number, and CNID of the extension. As to why they can be spoofed, it's a combination of laziness and the design not matching the way the phone system now works. The laziness part is telcos and PBXes. Telco switches can and should be programmed so they know the range of numbers assigned to a PBX and replace the CNID with its main number if it's out of range. Some telcos do that, some don't. The design problem is that CNID was designed for a closed network in which all of the sources of CNID were trustworthy or could at least be verified. In today's wild'n'crazy world of VoIP, inbound and outbound calls are often handled directly, and there is no way to tell what number should go with what call. For example, I have a VoIP phone on my desk. It has three inbound numbers, [served from] California, Quebec, and England. Outbound calls go through a cheap VoIP service in Germany. When I make calls, the CNID is pretty random, sometimes comes through as private, somtimes as noise characters, sometimes as digits. I would be happy to give them one of my inbound numbers to use as the CNID, but the provider offers no way to do that, and they couldn't tell whether I was lying. R's, John Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 18:22:34 +0000 (UTC) From: David Lesher <wb8foz@panix.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: NYS "bill" in works to outlaw phone ID spoofing Message-ID: <hmm9da$nve$1@reader1.panix.com> John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> writes: > As to why they can be spoofed, it's a combination of laziness and > the design not matching the way the phone system now works. The > laziness part is telcos and PBXes. Telco switches can and should be > programmed so they know the range of numbers assigned to a PBX and > replace the CNID with its main number if it's out of range. Some > telcos do that, some don't. And "the switch" used to be in a CO, controlled by Ma. Now, it's a PBX on someone's premises. Maybe Acme Dynamite Co. or maybe Google Inc. Or a wireless carrier, or.... The basic issue was the telco SS7 network has two piles: telcos, to be trusted without question; customers, not to be trusted at all. [After all, CCIS and SS7 came out of the bluebox era...] The idea that customers might own and control switches, and have trunk-side access to HER network, did not occur to them. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433 Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:56:03 -0800 From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Need minor part for 2500 phone Message-ID: <4B8DEBE3.5030209@thadlabs.com> On 3/2/2010 4:32 PM, Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > [...] > Mention of Mike Sandman brings to mind that the other day I was doing > a search on Caller ID boxes and Mike's website popped up with a > notation that he did not carry low-end Caller ID boxes because they're > readily available in hardware stores and drug stores. > > I thought so, too, until I started looking for one (low-end) in those > types of stores and couldn't find one. Hmmm, last time I've seen any stand-alone Caller ID box for sale was more than five years ago at Fry's Electronics' flagship store; the Caller ID boxes seem to have followed the dodo to extinction. None are available on Fry's or Newegg's websites and not even on Lady Ada's site (ladyada.net). A Google search ("caller id boxes") finds some but everyplace appears to be out of stock. Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:22:33 -0800 From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Need minor part for 2500 phone Message-ID: <Jgujn.1958$_v6.264@newsfe08.iad> Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/2/2010 4:02:30 PM Central Standard Time, > johnl@iecc.com writes: > >>> Our Bell System 2500 phone is missing one of the small white >>> plastic plungers that press down the 'on hook' switch when the >>> handset is placed on the cradle. Only one is needed to restore >>> the phone to original health and reasonably good condition! >>> >>> Would much welcome advice as to possible source. TIA >> >> This is the kind of stuff that long time Digest supporter Mike >> Sandman sells at www.sandman.com. > > Mention of Mike Sandman brings to mind that the other day I was doing > a search on Caller ID boxes and Mike's website popped up with a > notation that he did not carry low-end Caller ID boxes because they're > readily available in hardware stores and drug stores. > > I thought so, too, until I started looking for one (low-end) in those > types of stores and couldn't find one. Brickfront stores have been replaced by Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_9?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=caller+id+box&sprefix=caller+id As you can see they have bunches Frys has one: http://www.frys.com/search?search_type=regular&sqxts=1&query_string=caller+id+box&cat=0 Radio Shack was the pioneer. Now they have none because they want to see phones with built-in Caller ID. Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 02:38:41 -0500 From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: NYS "bill" in works to outlaw phone ID spoofing Message-ID: <MPG.25f7dc0e3fcf3d58989ca8@news.eternal-september.org> In article <4B8C984A.5010102@thadlabs.com>, thad@thadlabs.com says... > Agreed. I've seen 111-111-1111 and a variety of 800, 888, 877, and 866 > numbers spam-spoofed but what really annoys me is seeing my own number > as the caller. Needless to say, I never answer any of those and they've > stopped for at least several months now. I've gotten all the same as you, as well as 000-000-0000. Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 10:09:19 -0600 From: John Mayson <john@mayson.us> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Clueless Woman Calls Tech Show When Her Stolen Wi-Fi Disappears Message-ID: <6645152a1003030809j1ef75a12n68d4b803b2c102c4@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> wrote: > > After hitting YouTube this weekend - the show aired on Saturday - the > video depicting Laporte interviewing the confused woman has gone > viral, racking up 122,661 views at the time of this post. That was the funniest thing I've seen all week. I'm still trying to decide just how naive she really was. If she thought to go buy a wireless extender that tells me she sort of knew she was accessing someone else's wifi. But to call into Leo's show, wow, maybe she really is that lost. As a techie I sometimes forget just how forbidding technology can be to some people. Back when my son was in Boy Scouts we were at a meeting and I saw a Blackberry sail across the room. It was another parent. He had just bought a brand new Blackberry and was trying to transfer contact information from his previous phone and it wasn't working. Turns out he had already thrown away his old phone. He simply could not understand why he needed the old phone to get the information off of it. He's a very successful, intelligent man. But he just could not wrap his head around that. It's not like his data was in the cloud. This was several years ago before the idea of "the cloud" had really taken off. His rationalization about why he shouldn't have to have physical possession of his old phone to get the data off it made no sense to me, but apparently made perfect sense to him. He then shared with me that he owned half-a-dozen digital cameras because he couldn't figure out how to get the pictures off of them. When the camera got full he'd buy a new one. I wanted to ask him if he bought a new car every time he ran out of gas. To put a telecom angle back on this, I now understand why some people continue to use a traditional land-line phone without any features and perhaps a cassette-based answering machine. It's simple and they know how to use it. John - - John Mayson <john@mayson.us> http://www.linkedin.com/in/jmayson ***** Moderator's Note ***** I take a somewhat different view on this issue. To me, a WiFi hotspot that has default settings and no notice about restrictions is intended to be publicly available. Think about it: in most states, tramping across private land is allowed for hunting, unless specifically forbidden by posted signs. Anyone who turns on their laptop in front of my home will see an SSID that says "PrivateHorneFamily", which is, to my mind, the same as a "No Trespassing" sign. I feel that, given how hard it can be to locate the actual owner of an open WiFi Access Point, it's justified to use one so long as the "poacher" excercises discretion and doesn't degrade the AP's service through high-bandwidth downloads during hourse of normal use. FWIW. YMMV. Bill Horne Moderator Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:53:49 -0800 From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Clueless Woman Calls Tech Show When Her Stolen Wi-Fi Disappears Message-ID: <yuwjn.3075$NH1.1240@newsfe14.iad> John Mayson wrote: > On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> wrote: > >> After hitting YouTube this weekend - the show aired on Saturday - the >> video depicting Laporte interviewing the confused woman has gone >> viral, racking up 122,661 views at the time of this post. > > I'm still trying to decide just how naive she really was. If she > thought to go buy a wireless extender that tells me she sort of knew > she was accessing someone else's wifi. But to call into Leo's show, > wow, maybe she really is that lost. > (Moderator snip) > > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > > I take a somewhat different view on this issue. To me, a WiFi hotspot > that has default settings and no notice about restrictions is > intended to be publicly available. > > Think about it: in most states, tramping across private land is > allowed for hunting, unless specifically forbidden by posted > signs. Anyone who turns on their laptop in front of my home will see > an SSID that says "PrivateHorneFamily", which is, to my mind, the same > as a "No Trespassing" sign. > > I feel that, given how hard it can be to locate the actual owner of an > open WiFi Access Point, it's justified to use one so long as the > "poacher" excercises discretion and doesn't degrade the AP's service > through high-bandwidth downloads during hourse of normal use. Your point is well taken. Laporte was using the call to sell his sponsor, DSL Extreme, which he asserts is only $14.95 per month for the lowest level of service. What he fails to mention that rate requires a 1-year contract. Month-to-month it becomes $19.95. ***** Moderator's Note ***** If he was smarter, he'd have encouraged a debate about the question of poaching, instead of assuming everyone would agree with him that it's "Stealing". He'd have had that many more chances to plug his sponsor. Bill Horne Moderator Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:33:09 GMT From: art.shapiro@unisys.com (Arthur Shapiro) To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Clueless Woman Calls Tech Show When Her Stolen Wi-Fi Disappears Message-ID: <hmma15$24t6$1@si05.rsvl.unisys.com> In article <6645152a1003030809j1ef75a12n68d4b803b2c102c4@mail.gmail.com>, John Mayson <john@mayson.us> wrote: > To put a telecom angle back on this, I now understand why some > people continue to use a traditional land-line phone without any > features and perhaps a cassette-based answering machine. It's > simple and they know how to use it. Hmmm...I think this is an unfair leap. I'd like to think of myself as a fairly technically-saavy individual. I have a "traditional land-line phone without any features". Making a few phone calls per month, what am I missing? I'd love caller-ID, but don't need to pay "the phone company" $X per month to receive a piece of data that is floating around the network anyway. My answering machine (not cassette-based, however) does a pretty good job when it says: "We do not accept telemarketing calls at this number. If you're not one of those vermin, please speak at the beep". So what am I missing in my woeful ignorance? :-) Art ***** Moderator's Note ***** Art, it's time you got with the program! The Tall White Guy on the TV set told you do get Caller-ID and Voice Mail and a Touch-Tone[tm] phone. If TWG said it, you must obey! TWG knows what's best for America! TWG knows that the terrorists win if you don't buy more products! Art, the American Way of Life[tm] depends on you buying more! Bill Horne Moderator Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:10:38 -0500 From: Bill Horne <billQRM@horne.net> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: The perfect Telecom conversation piece Message-ID: <4B8E89FE.3040209@speakeasy.net> Here's a perfect conversation piece for those awkward social situations when someone asks what you did for a living in the dark ages before computers: http://tinyurl.com/ygltn8r . If you wind up buying it, feel free to invite me over to hook it up. ;-) Of course, if you do want to hook something up to a computer for demonstrations, something more "modern" may be in order, so here's some info on other equipment that is available for pickup in New Jersey. (This is from the "Greenkeys" mailing list). The seller's email is joewvu@remove-this.verizon.net There are some pictures here: http://35asr.com/telex_1.jpg http://35asr.com/telex_2.jpg http://35asr.com/telex_4.jpg Bill -- E. William Horne William Warren Consulting Computer & Network Installations, Security, and Service http://william-warren.com 781-784-7287 (Filter QRM for direct replies) Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 12:14:09 -0600 (CST) From: jsw <jsw@ivgate.omahug.org> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: The perfect Telecom conversation piece Message-ID: <201003031814.o23IE91p066464@ivgate.omahug.org> >Here's a perfect conversation piece for those awkward social >situations when someone asks what you did for a living in the dark >ages before computers $1200.00 !!!!! ????? You gotta be $#!+ting me !! ;-( We used those in the USCG, ca. early 1970s and they were considered old back then !! That's an old Baudot model with a 103 modem. In the mid 1980s, the going street price for those was the labor necessary to haul it away. ***** Moderator's Note ***** Everything old is new: having come of age in the 60's and having been a geek before the word was in use, I have a lot of Ham Radio equipment. Those who came of age in the 70's and 80's are now trying to recapture their youth. Bill Horne Moderator Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:50:14 -0800 From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: NYS "bill" in works to outlaw phone ID spoofing Message-ID: <brwjn.16987$sx5.14033@newsfe16.iad> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > On Feb 28, 11:17 pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote: > >> If the bill is signed into law, phone spoofers could be fined up to $2,000 >> per call, subject to an aggregate amount of $100,000 for all illegal calls >> placed within a 72-hour period. > > This is a good idea and a start, but unfortunately I don't have much > hope for it. (Moderator snip) > The baby bells have Call Trace (*57) but for some reason they strongly > discourage its use. They don't publicize it. They charge a steep fee > for each use. They do nothing unless there are a long series of > calls; and even then they dump it over to the local police. They > don't want it used for sales abusiveness. I wonder if the competing > local phone companies and VOIP carriers even support *57 or would know > what to do if a complaint came in. Well, it depends. If you file a police report then they do become quite cooperative. But, I think (someone will surely correct me if I am wrong) Call Trace captures Caller ID, so if it's spoofed it's useless. They can set up an ANI trap, but that requires manual logging by the complainant. Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:22:25 -0800 From: Bruce L.Bergman <bruceNOSPAMbergman@gmail.invalid> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: More about 5E remote from Catalina Island to the SoCal mainland Message-ID: <agpro5dk0tf5dh82vhuv7lm8rqqjnutrj6@4ax.com> On Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:48:59 -0800, Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com> wrote: >Stephen wrote: > >> Lots of islands seem to have microwave originally acting as backup to >> subsea fibre - or multiple fibres on different routes. >> >> It tends to cost real money though.... >> http://www.surecw.com/mobile/page-594 > > Catalina Island's population is less than 4,000. Doesn't Jersey > have a lot more people than that? I believe so, but even small populations can use surprisingly large quantities of bandwidth if it is available at a reasonable cost. People who work at home and are running a small stock-brokerage or travel agency from the island, etc. Due diligence nowadays involves a lot of web-surfing and PDF downloading. And that 4,000 is residents, doesn't count the tourist trade. Note that one of those Cable & Wireless links mentioned above (HUGO East) is using optical fibers wrapped inside a high voltage undersea power transmission cable. Catalina Island could use one or two of those combination cables to the mainland, as a backup if nothing else. As far as I can track down, the island is running on a 9 Megawatt diesel-engine based powerplant on the outskirts of Avalon. Even allowing multiple paralleled units, there are inevitably going to be the occasional..."power excursions." Generators do stall, and physically break down, circuit breakers trip out, operators hit the wrong switch, or they close the wrong fuel supply valve, and... (In layman's terms: "Honey? Where are the candles?" is probably uttered more often than they would like. ) > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > > Given that the channel islands are in between the UK and the > mainland, I assume that they are a convenient junction point for the > cables, and that the HUGO network dropped off a few paths at Jersey > so that the island's residents could find out how nice their home > is. > > But seriously, folks ... I wonder if people who live on islands > consume a disproportionate share of electronic entertainment. Considering that there isn't a lot of First Run Movie access - One screen, movie and live. Room seats 1,184 people, they show one movie at a time, one run nightly at 7:00 with a 9:30 show on Friday and Saturday... (Oh, and one of the last four working Page theater organs in the US, 16 ranks.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon_Theater_%28Catalina%29 And similar live entertainment venues are also geographically challenged by either being all-locals or having to bring all the band's gear across on the ferry... I'm betting that there are a lot of Netflix envelopes going back and forth on the mail boat. And a lot of cable and satellite customers. --<< Bruce >>-- TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Bill Horne. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. The Telecom Digest is moderated by Bill Horne. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Copyright (C) 2009 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of The Telecom digest (13 messages)