SMS scammers: an inside look

[Адвокат]

SMS scammers: an inside look
I talked to a person who understands many fraud schemes. He anonymously told me about the "inner kitchen" of scammers and all the layouts of such SMS scam.
I will make a reservation right away - he is NOT a scammer, he is just well versed in the topic.
- Tell us about the scheme of such fraud. How are they usually registered? How to get a short number, how is the content provider calculated with them?

There are several schemes for registering payment acceptance via SMS, but in general, everything happens according to the following scheme:
A one-day company is registered (mainly a state of emergency on an individual who is “drop” - a person whose documents are used to register bank accounts, companies, etc.).
After that, the company signs a contract with the content aggregator for renting premium SMS numbers. In most cases, this does not require additional documents, this can be done using affiliate programs of content aggregators.
In addition, the company can register a prefix with the content aggregator using dating and even bribing employees of the aggregator (this method also has the right to life )

- What is anti-rabbit SMS billing?
Anti-rabbit billing is SMS billing that ignores subscribers' complaints (about incorrect services, spam, viruses, etc.). Some dishonest content providers offer such services to partners. Although, at the same time, many anti-abuse billing systems have their own rules: a strict ban on children’s and zoo porn, it is forbidden to indicate the wrong price for sending SMS (for example, you cannot write to the subscriber in the agreement that SMS costs 2 rubles if its real cost is 30 rubles).

Abuz [from the English. abuse - insult, abuse] - a service that accepts complaints of spam, hacking attempts, illegal content, fraud, etc. In slang, “abuz” means directly the customer’s complaint.

SMS billing [from English billing - billing] - in this case, a service that allows you to earn on paid SMS-messages.

- What is the difference between different types of traffic - from classmates, from VKontakte, from trojans?
Yes, practically nothing. Unless you can drive traffic from classmates and VKontakte from some target audience (for example, spam only St. Petersburg girls aged 6 to 22 )

Traffic [from English traffic - traffic in this case, sites where users pick up an SMS blocker and then have to send a paid SMS.

- What are the general incomes of those who write SMS Trojans?
If you are talking about viruses similar to the one you picked up, I would not call it SMS Trojan; let's call it what this family of viruses call their creators - "blockers." As for income, they are different. For example, I know about cases of earnings in the region of 100-200 cu in a day.


- “Divorces” with trojans didn’t appear yesterday, right? Why did the situation with them worsen only now?
Too many lamers and greedy personalities have appeared on the net. If they didn’t spam uncontrollably the people, break websites and infect everyone, the topic would live for a long time.
In addition, the situation worsened for several more reasons:
-Some aggregators did not control what their sub-content providers do;
-it is quite possible that these are the nuances of the redistribution of the market of content aggregators in the CIS and some companies thus make a little zapadlo to their competitors.

- The Russian MTS introduced preliminary SMS with tariffing, which are sent to the user so that he confirms the withdrawal of money. Is this a good anti-fraud measure? Or window dressing?
Undoubtedly, this will reduce the number of SMS messages sent to scammers' numbers / prefixes. But there are much more effective methods that will reduce SMS fraud by 85-90%. The other day I spoke with a person who was involved in the introduction of this antifraud-feature. According to him, these are only the first steps, there will be much more interesting things.

Frod [from the English. fraud - fraud, fraud] - various schemes of "scam".

- Why can a content provider cover SMS scammers?
A content provider can cover fraudsters for several reasons: either it does not want to admit the fact of fraud due to the fact that the content aggregator is responsible for the operator (and the operator knows how to fine ...), or simply does not want to lose income.
But, as a rule, content aggregators do not particularly cover scammers - reputation and direct contracts with the operator are more important.

- How can you overcome such SMS fraud? Who should do what for this?
The first steps have already been taken:
- Cellular subscribers are now aware of SMS fraud;
- operators tightened checks on SMS services;
- the operators severely punished the ruble of content aggregators and providers who were caught in fraud;
- Operators launch anti-fraud schemes for providing SMS services;
Source: https://pazzive.livejournal.com/192025.html

 

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

Thank!