69 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
69 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
WASHINGTON (AP)-Telephone companies are declaring war on thousands of college
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students,professionals, and even prisoners who get into the telephone network
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illegally and ring up a half billon dollars in unpaid calls a year.
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Companies are changing the software as well as the hardware in their netwoeks
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to try to block calls, and they are offering amnesty programs on college
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campuses for students to fess up and pay up.
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They also are working with federal authorities to prosecute call-sell
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operators who are using stolen authorization codes and electronic devices to
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break into the network and sell calls to all parts of the world at drastically
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dicounted prices.
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"We look at it as a major problem, and it's definately well worth going after
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this half billion dollars," said Rami Abuhamdeh, executive director of the
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industry-sponsored Communucations Fraud Control Association. (CFCA)
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"In any industry, if you don't do anything about it, it's only going to fet
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worse."
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Computer-literate college stuents are among the biggest offenders and their
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campuses are breeding grounds for large-scale theft.
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Authorization codes get passed around quickly, allowing students to phone
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home for free, telephone company security officials say.
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"That's something we're going to have to deal with because college students
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have inquisitive minds and they like to do things like challenge the network,"
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said Neal Norman, security manager for AT&T.
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MCI officials say they recently pursuaded 1,000 students at North Texas State
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University in Denton, Texas, to turn themselves in and pay about $100,000 for
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the illegal calls they made.
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At American University in Washington, D.C., 400 students turned themselves in
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and are being billed for about $25,000 so far, MCI spokesman John Houser said.
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Computer hackers -- including doctors, lawyers, and some housewives -- who
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search computer files for authorization codes are another problem.
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Abuhamdeh says their heaviest damage is in selling the codes or posting them
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on BBSs.
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The Hackers themselves usually don't make as many calls as ither groups,
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including prisoners, he said.
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"Prisoners have a lot of time on their hands and they're very innovative. And
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unfortunately in a lot of places, they have access to phones continually,"
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AT&T's Norman said.
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In on case, Norman said, a prisoner called a hospital, identified himself as
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a doctor and asked to be connect to another number in the hospital. When that
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number answered, he asked to be switched to the hospital operator, whom he
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asked to connect him to an outside line to for a long-distance call.
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Companies are using sophisticated computer technology to identify patterns of
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illegal calling, which are often traced to operations run by "call selllers."
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"They make $2,000 a week selling calls, and that's tax free," said Martin
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Preede, a special agent for corporate security at NY Telephone Co. But He
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warned that phone companies are actively tracking down such operations and
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prosecuting.
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Typed in from a local newspaper. Article was written in late April.
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Courtesy of The Wiz Kid. |