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From: klb@pegasus.att.com (Kevin Blatter)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: SMDR's and Credit Card Calls
Message-ID: <11998@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 10 Sep 90 20:32:17 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 635, Message 3 of 13


In article <11905@accuvax.nwu.edu>, davidb@pacer.uucp (David Barts) writes:
 
> klb@pegasus.att.com (Kevin L. Blatter) writes:
 
> > I wrote call
> > accounting systems which utilizes SMDR information for billing or
> > whatever and our standard practice was if we saw a calling card number
> > come through that we stripped the information out and classified the
> > call as a 'charge call' which meant that we would not rate the call.
> > However, we could have stored the information for who-knows-what
> > purpose.
 
> Of more concern to me is what happens to an SMDR printout AFTER the
> hotel (or who/whatever) is no longer interested in it.  Is it treated
> as the sensitive information it is (and shredded or incinerated), or
> do they just toss it into the dumpster and leave it waiting for the
> next pair of prying eyes to come along?  (I have this nasty feeling
> that the latter is all-too-common.)

Of course, this would be entirely up to the powers-that-be, but in my
case, there was no hard-copy (except in one case where the chinese
manager of a Waikiki Hotel who would manually verify the SMDR output
with the calls logged in the system, but that's another story...).
Anyway, with the system that I worked with, there was no option to
save the information.  The best that could be done would be to split
the RS-232 SMDR feed and have one line go to the system while the
other would be processed by the Call Accounting system.  In other
words, if we saw a billed-to-third-party call ie. calling card, we
simply ignored the 'Call Record'.

I do however, agree with Mr. Barts that hotel personnel tend to follow
the general attitude in society that a calling card number is somehow
not to be considered proprietary information and throw it in bins with
the rest of the garbaGarbage.  In fact, my opinion is that in general
people in this country are ignorant of the way the phone system works.
Recently, I had an acquaintance express to me that it didn't make a
difference which Long Distance carrier one had since all of the money
went to "Ma Bell" anyway!  She also couldn't figure out what all the
flap was about with the LD wars, using the above argument again.  Wow,
that's scary!


Kevin L. Blatter
AT&T - Bell Labs
Lincroft, NJ

Disclaimer - AT&T probably has a policy on the above opinions, but these
opinions are my own.