Caller ID Spoofing Business Owner Bails Out Following Death Threats

from the so-much-for-that-plan dept

Last week, we had mentioned the story of a company that was offering caller ID spoofing for collections agencies and private investigators. Earlier this week, the company officially launched the solution and the press went wild... as did many angry people, apparently. The guy behind the business says he's been inundated with angry calls and emails, and even had a death threat taped to his door. The anger apparently isn't so much about the fact that he'll be spoofing phone numbers, but that he's basically revealing this technology commercially that was previously only used by hackers and crackers, who now feel he's somehow selling out. In fact, the response has been so crazy that he has decided to sell the business -- though, the stories of death threats probably won't do much good for the selling price, which makes this whole story seem a bit odd. Why not just shut down the service? If people are really pissed that he's making money off of this, won't selling it off be just as bad? Something doesn't seem right about the whole story.
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  1. identicon
    Chris Maresca, 3 Sep 2004 @ 11:04pm

    No Subject Given

    It's really trivial to spoof caller ID. In fact, if you are running an Asterisk Open Source PBX, you can set ANY caller-id (both name and number) for any outbound call. We do this when we route long-distance calls over our VoIP trunk lines, so that calls look like they are from our main number....
    Chris.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    aNonMooseCowherd, 4 Sep 2004 @ 8:56pm

    publicity

    I wouldn't be surprised it the story about the death threat was made up, just to get publicity and make the business seem more lucrative.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    eskayp, 5 Sep 2004 @ 11:04pm

    Caller ID Spoofing

    Were I doing something like that it would be behind 3 layers of anonymity.
    This guy may have been totally naive, or not as slick as he fancied himself.
    He has enraged people who are adamant about privacy and do not want to be found by agencies trying to track them.
    Some of those shadowy sorts are likely 'action oriented' individuals or groups.
    He's put the mark of the beast on his own forehead.
    Lots of Luck!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Sep 2004 @ 4:18am

    Useless really...

    Well, unless he has a patent or something the 7th Rule of the New Economey applies:

    7 - Do something the nobody else has yet (or take something that every techie can do and turn it into a service for which you can charge money), wait 6 months trying to be brought, financed or IPOed and watch as 6 other upstarts steal your idea and market share diluting the novelty and worth of your idea/effort.

    The folks making death threats (if there actually are any) are just wasting their time and effort fighting the unending tide of progress.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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