Identify and discuss two telephone/pager scams.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The Mexican collect call scam originated in that country. It preys upon Hispanic consumers and is basically a reverse of the scheme just described. The telephone rings and a voice, using the correct names of family members, says this is an emergency collect call, and the caller accepts the charges only to discover a stranger is on the line talking about something entirely different.
It is entirely legal for phone companies to bill consumers for certain types of services as part of their regular telephone bill. Cramming is the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading, inaccurate, or deceptive charges on the victims' telephone bills, which may be accidental but is often intentional. Categories of cramming include voicemail, long-distance service, paging, Internet access, memberships, and pornography. Worldwide, pornography is a $97 billion industry, $13 billion of which is earned in the United States; a full 25% of all search engine requests involve pornography. It did not, however, become a major industry simply by providing "free pornography." One source of its revenue is cramming-for example, visitors to some porn sites read that they can "download" movies for free; but the next month there is a charge on their telephone bill. Similarly, another common "cram" used in the porn industry is to request age verification through a VISA or MasterCard number. However, the following month, there is a charge on their card for access to the porn website. There is virtually no recourse, since many of these sites are hosted in foreign countries. Much worse, the billing continues on a month-to-month basis until the victim contacts his/her credit card company. Yet in other cases, the "good" credit card numbers are sold to others and the fraud continues. The victim is forced to close his/her account and in the most vicious of cases, the victim's credit history is diminished for nonpayment of services.
1-900 and foreign exchange numbers are scams where scammers will leave a telephone message or send an email from someone offering to engage in phone sex, telling the recipient they have won a prize (which may end up being only a few dollars), telling them that a family member is sick, or some other bogus message. The return number may be a 1-900 (pay for service calls, some of which may be legitimate), 809 (Dominican Republic), 284 (British Virgin Islands), 876 (Jamaica), or some other three-digit code. While international calls normally require a "011" prefix, calls to the just-identified countries, Canada, and some other Caribbean countries do not. The recipients think they are making a domestic long-distance call, but they are actually being connected to a number outside the United States and are billed at international call rates. Return callers often have to wade through automated menus and hear "dentist office" music to keep them on the line. These scams average $35 per call or more, which appears on the victims' telephone bills. Victims' vulnerability can be greatly reduced if they determine what country the three-digit prefix designates.