Forwarded from the Risks digest (www.risks.org) ================================================ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 19:37:31 +0000 From: "Patrick O'Beirne" <mail2@sysmod.com> Subject: GuineTel seeks ways of clamping down on scam fraud By Brian King, Balancing Act's News Update 188 (21 Dec 2003) http://www.balancingact-africa.com Phantom Calls In 2003, Terri Lockwood of Indianapolis, Indiana received a phone bill with hefty charges for calls to Guinea-Bissau, a West African country she had never heard of, and much less had reason to call. When she disputed the charges, the American operator AT&T told her that the calls were genuine, and that she or someone in her house must have called, or accessed an adult entertainment site on the Internet. The intruder was a program that had slipped unnoticed onto the family computer, and reconfigured the connection to dial a number in Guinea-Bissau (code 245). The number, however, does not officially exist. The national operator, the regulatory body, and the International Telecommunications Union all agree that the number dialed from Terri Lockwood¹s computer is not programmed within the territory of Guinea-Bissau. Communications infrastructure of the country, furthermore, could not conceivably support the graphic-intensive content production and broadcast of many adult entertainment sites. For the last few years the national operator Guine Telecom has been concerned with repairing basic telephony infrastructure damaged in a devastating civil war. At the beginning of this year Guine Telecom had no new cables to repair its network, no wires to install phones for clients, and approximately 50,000 people on waiting lists. This is not a company receiving revenue from a brisk adult entertainment business, legitimate or not, apparently conducted in its name. The History In 1989 the Government of Guinea-Bissau cemented a strategic partnership with Marconi (now part of the Portugal Telecom group) All international traffic to and from Guinea-Bissau would run through Marconi in Portugal. Marconi was also given the right to open and maintain bank accounts abroad in the name of Guine Telecom. Critics of the company say that management of the company became increasingly chaotic and untransparent. Around 1996 Portugal Telecom managers set up a bank of computers at the earth station to receive pornographic calls from abroad. The calls were received at Guine Telecom and were immediately transmitted back without entering the national network. The practice reportedly generated significant new traffic to Guinea-Bissau, and the added revenue funded new investments in infrastructure. On June 7, 1998 a failed coup d¹etat tipped the country into civil war; key infrastructure (such as the earth station) was destroyed and in the midst of it the bank of audiotext (read 'phone sex') computers. After their departure in 1998 Portugal Telecom began withholding settlement payments for international calls terminating in Guinea-Bissau, and has continued to do so. A journalist from the major Spanish newspaper El País confirmed a so-called ³epidemic² of calls to Guinea-Bissau from Spain, appearing on the bills of people who had no relationship with the country. In all these instances the Spanish operator Telefonica responded that the calls were genuine. Around the same time, a dissatisfied Spanish pornography consumer actually called Guine Telecom to complain about the service. Technical Director Malam Fati was alerted, and so discovered for himself the existence of a number of web pages advertising live pornographic video. The pages appear to be designed to target particular countries; all are linked to a home page at www.sexhotel.com. The pages offer 'free' access to live pornographic video without requiring credit card information. Interested viewers need only to call a number on the screen (dialing instructions from each country are included), to receive a password. These access numbers bear the (245) international code, but the regional codes are not assigned within the territory of Guinea-Bissau. For the rest of this story, go to: http://www.balancingact-africa.com Patrick O'Beirne, Systems Modelling Ltd., Gorey, Co. Wexford, Ireland. +353 55 22294