Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 09:21 PST
From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: BC Tel Pay Numbers
Reply-To: John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 855, Message 8 of 8

andys@internet.sbi.com (Andy Sherman) writes:

> It must be wonderful to be so perfect and smug and sanctimonious.  You
> moan and groan about the upsurge in crime, and about the downsurge in
> people taking responsibility for their own actions.  Yet you
> consistantly excuse criminals who prey upon an unsuspecting public
> with tricks such as this and the beeper scam.

Methinks you are being a wee bit harsh on our Moderator.
Responsibility is responsibility and demanding it from one group does
not excuse the actions of another. If I have locks on my doors,
cooperation from my neighbors, and a state-of-the-art security system
to attempt to hang on to my toys, this is not a statement of approval
of the actions of burglars. Rather, I would consider it an adjustment
to the real world.

Anyone who owns or rents a pager has already progressed to a plateau
above the buck-novice telephone user. There are people who use pagers
in lieu of an answering service or secretary (or even a smart
answering machine) and these people have the responsibility to
determine the nature and charges for the return calls they make. I
carry a pager. Do I blindly return calls to every number that appears
in the display?  Absolutely not. And I have a better-than-average
knowledge of the prefixes and locations in my region.

And concerning systems that dial out such as BBS verification: how
dare anyone fail to put restrictions and limits in the system, leave
everything wide open, and then whine and moan about being bitten by a
scam artist. Really, Andy, what would you say to someone who had an
EasyHack (r) DISA on a PBX and then cried to your former employer to
have the $22,000-worth of charges removed? And what makes that
situation different from the BBS operator? Is the BBS operator
"excused" because he is "just a little guy"?

And how can any of these observations be construed to be approval of
crooks and scammers? The fact is that they are out there and must be
dealt with AT THE PREVENTION LEVEL first and foremost. Demanding more
laws and punishment is akin to the passage and enforcement of laws
proscribing the monitoring of cellular frequencies. Crooks and scam
operators are bad guys; on that point there is no disagreement. But
concerning the matter of responsibility: It is still ultimately in the
hands of the customer.

I have a toy "partyline conference" which is free to anyone who calls.
It connects a number of people together on multiple lines. It is not
designed to allow anyone to have access to the dial tone on another
line. BUT, since nothing is perfect including hardware and certainly
my software, I have taken just a few precautions. The lines are all
ground start, absolutely preventing a stuck connection from returning
wide open dial tone to a caller. They all have billed number screening
for third-party and collect calls. The account is passworded. There
are even a few other precautions that are not public.

Taking these preventative measures is not a statement, explicit or
implicit, that I approve of the actions of dishonest people. And
because I take this responsibility seriously, I can scarcely remember
a time when any of the nightmares described on this forum have become
a matter of personal expense or inconvenience. But it is slightly
irritating to have people excused from responsibility when scum
inevitably strike.

Rather than demand that "something be done" about crooks by law
enforcement, it is more realistic to encourage citizens to avoid
becoming victims.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   +1 408 264 4115     |       FAX:
john@ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | +1 408 264 4407