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Cellphones Communications

'Who Owns Your Wireless Service? Crooks Do' (krebsonsecurity.com) 36

Posted by EditorDavid from the phone-troubles dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader trolman scared this scathing editorial by security researcher Brian Krebs: If you are somehow under the impression that you -- the customer -- are in control over the security, privacy and integrity of your mobile phone service, think again. And you'd be forgiven if you assumed the major wireless carriers or federal regulators had their hands firmly on the wheel. No, a series of recent court cases and unfortunate developments highlight the sad reality that the wireless industry today has all but ceded control over this vital national resource to cybercriminals, scammers, corrupt employees and plain old corporate greed...

Incessantly annoying and fraudulent robocalls. Corrupt wireless company employees taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to unlock and hijack mobile phone service. Wireless providers selling real-time customer location data, despite repeated promises to the contrary. A noticeable uptick in SIM-swapping attacks that lead to multi-million dollar cyberheists...

Is there any hope that lawmakers or regulators will do anything about these persistent problems? Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology Law and Policy, said the answer -- at least in this administration -- is probably a big "no."

"The takeaway here is the complete and total abdication of any oversight of the mobile wireless industry," Sohn told KrebsOnSecurity. "Our enforcement agencies aren't doing anything on these topics right now, and we have a complete and total breakdown of oversight of these incredibly powerful and important companies."
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'Who Owns Your Wireless Service? Crooks Do' More

'Who Owns Your Wireless Service? Crooks Do'

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  • ...Corrupt wireless company employees taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to unlock and hijack mobile phone service. Wireless providers selling real-time customer location data, despite repeated promises to the contrary. A noticeable uptick in SIM-swapping attacks that lead to multi-million dollar cyberheists...

    [bold mine]

    Can anyone here tell me this is any different when compared to conditions in those "3rd world" countries?

    • Can anyone here tell me this is any different when compared to conditions in those "3rd world" countries?

      A lot of those "3rd World " countries rely on tourism, and those rich tourists* like a good cell-phone service when they're on holiday, so many of those "3rd World" countries have way better (and cheaper) service than what Americans put up with.

      * Not Americans obviously. They don't miss what they don't have.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 )
        A lot of these "third world" countries also didn't have any existing copper telephony in the first place, at least not outside major cities; they just went straight to national cellular coverage and as a result often have much better reception and data in rural areas than many "first world" countries. The reason they have better service has less to do with tourism and more to do with not having any legacy companies out to protect their revenue from existing copper based infrastructure that is quiote possib

    • invisible hand
      free market
      bla bla bla

  • We find all these outrages "tolerable"... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by west ( 39918 ) on Sunday August 11, 2019 @06:02PM (#59077328)

    We only have a finite number of things we can get truly outraged about.

    And cell phone annoyances (yes, annoyances, these problems simply aren't that troublesome for most of us) don't really rank.

    At the point that they do, something meaningful will be done. Until that point, companies and government will make gestures to placate our feeling of annoyance, and nothing more.

    If we want change, then we have to provide those who have to do the work (companies and government) the incentive to do the work. When profits drop, or politicians feel their re-election is at risk, something meaningful will be done. Not before.

    • There are a lot of annoying things cell phone providers can do, but you can do some mitigating. The worst is location data, but the best thing to do regarding that is to have a burner phone and a MVNO not tired in any way to the main telco.

      With regards to SMS, iMessage and Signal should mitigate that risk. For voice, Google Voice, FreedomPOP, or another VoIP provider. For IP connections, almost all phones can use VPNs.

      Robocalls are still a hazard, to the point where even the FCC is starting to yank the t

    • If we want change, then we have to provide those who have to do the work (companies and government) the incentive to do the work.

      You're going to leave the fate of change in the hands of the government and ..."companies"? And you're willing to give them an incentive to do so? Yikes!

      I'll compare that to 'dressing up really pretty to stop your uncle from molesting you'. What you're calling "incentive for governments and companies" will certainly be used against you in the form of a carrot that you'll never catch. But hey, we can only be outraged at a finite number of things. ...what do I know. I'm just another idiot in the world.

  • The biggest underlying issue seems to be that often older people are ignorant of technology and don't want to learn. Government officials often just let things happen.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ze_jua ( 910531 )
      Sorry, but it looks like that young people don't care too. In other words, we are screwed.

  • He scared it? (Score:4, Funny)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Sunday August 11, 2019 @06:14PM (#59077348) Homepage

    How does one scare an editorial? Tell it print is dead?

  • They show unwillingness to patrol their own property which is being used to scam people, regulate and patrol it regularly since they wish to do nothing. .

    Make it expensive for them, too, so that they need to regulate it themselves to save money. That is the only way to stop this crap.

    LEVEL 3 - I'm looking at you. You're the biggest offender from the traffic logs I can actually procure (those that you aren't trying to actively hide, that is. Yes, I have record of those, too, thanks to friends inside your or

  • "The takeaway here is the complete and total abdication of any oversight of the mobile wireless industry," It is not just the wireless industry. The more accurate statement for the Trump administration is, "The takeaway here is the complete and total abdication of any oversight."

  • No problems here (Score:3)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday August 11, 2019 @06:40PM (#59077404)

    I open my flip phone, dial the number, and make my call. When I'm done, I close the lid and the call ends. As for those robocalls, if you're not on my list, I don't answer.

    I must be doing something wrong because I don't have any of these mentioned issues.

    • You are just as vulnerable, really.

      What the criminals do is do the SIM swap to take over your phone number. They then request password resets for various accounts of interest, and typically the banks and whatnot use SMS to "verify" that you are who you say you are. As long as you have your banking configured to use SMS as a form of 2FA, you are just as vulnerable with a flip phone as anything else.

      • I don't remember him saying he does banking on his phone. I don't on my phone.

        • Nobody said anything about online banking on the phone.

          It is password resets for accounts that are configured to send a SMS as the 2nd factor of authentication.

      • There aren't any businesses besides my cell carrier that have ever been informed that I have a cell phone number. I can't think why I would want a company to bother me on my cell number.
    • Wow, so cool! But how do you watch porn on your phone?

  • Also (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Sunday August 11, 2019 @06:47PM (#59077420)

    Four banks were robbed last year, so bank robbers control the banking industry.

  • If the number isn't on my contact list, I just hang up. If it is someone really trying to reach me, they will leave a message. If I don't get a message, I just add that number to my block list.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      Personal experience, blocking numbers does no good. I've never received a second robo-call from the same number.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ... what with monopolist corporations. There are three (3) influential parties in the United States:

    Democrats
    Republicans
    Capitalists

    And the vast majority of the first two have merged their ideologies into the third.

    The current administration has been obsessed, since November 8, 2016, with November 3, 2020.

  • Take back control... (Score:3)

    by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Sunday August 11, 2019 @07:39PM (#59077536)

    Treat your phone as a dumb service and demote your carrier down the value chain. Use a persistent VPN and a SIP provider for telephone service. If you want to be ultra-paranoid, just use a portable hotspot from the carrier and a wifi-only tablet as your “phone.” And of course, stop using Facebook, Google, or Amazon products; exclude Apple if you want to continue the ultra-paranoid approach.

    It is significant regression, but that is the downside of everything being integrated and “easy.”

    My first step has been switching my primary phone number to SIP with an area code that has a low Chinese population to help stop that particular spam, and in a lower income neighborhood to try to address another. My family all communicates with Signal... which isn’t perfect but does check a number of the boxes.

    • Or just live in a country that just doesn't have these problems?

      Honestly, robocalls? SIM swapping?

      Foreign to me, and I'm quite happy to let it stay that way.

  • Sure, I was a bit naive when I got my first mobile phone but it didn't take me long to figure out who the real crooks were.

    I mean I grew up with Ma Bell. The phone company is always the crook.

    One Ringy Dingy!

  • Like mass shootings, it's not that they don't ever at all exist in the rest of the developed world, it's that they're so rare as to not be a significant policy issue. American exceptionalism is not always a benefit to Americans.

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