Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: stank@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (Stan Krieger)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Computerized Collect Calls
Message-ID: <3489@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 90 19:37:57 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 73, message 3 of 13


> [Moderator's Note: And this is also a new source for fraud, as people
> are learning that their name can be anything at all, i.e. 'I will be
> home in an hour'; 'meet me at 5:00 PM at the airport', etc....to which
> the called party responds 'no', and disconnects. No charge for the
> call, yet a message delivered quite well. At least a live operator
> knows it is unlikely your name will be 'call me back at abc-wxyz'; the
> computer knows from zilch.  PT]


I don't know if I read this in this group or somewhere else, but such
fraudulent usage can clearly be traced.  Obviously, the voice
recordings can be kept; all the telco or AOS needs to do is listen to
each day's recordings and if a message appears where the person's name
should've been, they can assume the call was made, completed, and
accepted, and bill the receiving phone anyway.  I'm sure the
technology exists, or can easily be developed, to allow a playback of
only the rejected calls, so it's a lot less listening.

True, someone may try to "prank" someone else by using an automated
collect phone to leave such a "message", but clearly how many people
who really did try to leave a message instead of their name would do
it again if they were caught?


Stan Krieger
Summit, NJ
 ...!att!attunix!smk