[VoiceOps] Dead Air calls to TFNs

[April Jones]

We handle a lot of toll-free traffic and we can compensate carriers who
send us their toll-free traffic, because we're able to bill the term LEC
and "spread the wealth" as it were. The unfortunate downside is customers
who generate fraudulent traffic (dead air, background noise) to do "traffic
pumping." It's not difficult to detect, we monitor traffic on new toll-free
customers (one-way RTP streams, exact same ALOC for connected calls, lots
of calls from the same ANIs...) but it does slip through every now and
again. We've disconnected a handful of customers for pulling this one.
Where there's "free money" to be made, you can bet someone is generating
nonsense and sending it your way.

I don't think it's specifically targeted (we've had our customers ask us
about random dead-air calls to their toll-free numbers) but it sure is
frustrating.

Probably not a security risk, just annoying fraud. The bigger carriers who
are paying out on the toll-free traffic will scrutinize this stuff to no
end, so whoever is responsible for originating that traffic or billing AT&T
or Verizon is going to get a nice surprise come billing time...



>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ivan Kovacevic <ivan.kovacevic at startelecom.ca>
> To: voiceops at voiceops.org
> Cc:
> Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2015 10:31:16 -0400
> Subject: [VoiceOps] Dead Air calls to TFNs
>
> Over the last 3 months we have seen a marked increase in dead air calls to
> Toll Free numbers that belong to us, our customers, etc.
>
>
>
> If there is an answering machine on the other side, these calls result in
> a dead air voice message of few seconds in duration. If a live person picks
> up they won’t hear anything on the other side and the line stays connected
> (didn’t measure for how long, but more than 60 sec). The volume varies
> daily but ranges from 0 to 4-5 calls per day.
>
>
>
> Calls come from US ANIs (925, 631 area codes for example), but ANI is
> easily spoofed so doesn’t really mean much. In fact, when we called some of
> the numbers we got private residences of folks who did not call us.
>
>
>
> Other than the nuisance factor (our support line is getting the calls as
> well) and a small additional cost there doesn’t seem to be a real impact.
>
>
>
> Are these just war-dialling attacks to find back doors?
>
>
>
> Is anyone else seeing the same? Are you doing anything to prevent it?
>
>
>
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
>
>
> Ivan Kovacevic
>
> Vice President, Client Services
>
> Star Telecom | www.startelecom.ca | SIP Based Services for Contact
> Centers
>
>
>
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