Iliad and the complaint for the scam of « spoofing »: how the disguised phone calls work that are worth from the contract

The phone rings. An Italian cell number appears on the display, not stored. Unknown. It will be the usual operator who proposes a new offer for bills, think Michele Rillo34 years old from Benevento, residing in Rome. When he replies, on the other side a recorded voice starts: « Dear Customer, a contractual remodeling will soon take place ». And then the invitation to press a button to select the operator with whom you signed the contract. The mechanism is basically « carpet »: all the main telephone operators are mentioned. In this case, Michele is a user Iliad And, therefore, select the corresponding key 9. At this point, he is finally transferred to a flesh and blood call center operator.

The Miss who responds, pretending to be an Iliad employee, confirms an imminent « disservice on the line » and A consequent « tariff remodeling »pushing Michele to migrate as soon as possible towards a new contract, to avoid suffering the disservices. And it is at this moment that another operator of the Call Center comes into play, this time representing a phantom – and non -existent – « ministerial consumer protection service». The operator checks the best offer at the active moment and asks Michele for the willingness to be contacted; He accepts, and shortly thereafter he is actually contacted by another call center operator, on behalf of a telephone company. But what the operators-space do not know is that this time they composed the wrong number: Michele Rillo, in fact, in addition to being an Iliad customer, is also an employee of the same telephone company And, for some time, the company has been engaged in contrasting these deceptive behaviors. With the recording of the Truffaldina call (See the video here), Michele Rillo – together with another colleague and the company itself – presented a complaint to the Court of Milan.

The CLI Spoofing technique

Behind the story of Michele Rillo, similar to thousands of identical stories that are announced every day by the ring of an automatic phone call, a sophisticated expedient is hidden: the CLI Spoofing (acronym for Calling Line Identification Spoofing), a technique that allows you to make a phone number different from the real one appear on the recipient’s device. The number that appears on the screen has therefore been manipulated, masking the true identity of the caller and making him seem an official communication from a company or a service that has been entrusted to us. The trap is tense and when the user unaware, he replies, A river of personal information is loaded through a deception which is based on the same trust as those who have unfortunately responded to the call.

The mechanism of the fraud

But how exactly does the mechanism of this fraud work? Let’s try to explain it step by step.
1) CLI dirty. The first thing the scammer does is to tamper with the Calling Line Identification (CLI) to make the phone call. As mentioned, the technical device allows you to mask the authentic callling ID and then make a credible number appear on the display of the recipient’s smartphone, when instead the call starts from a switchboard (Italian or foreign).
2) Agency of « Lead Generation ». The call is focused on an urgency (characterized by a narrative built on the basis of false information), which serves to steal the user’s trust. The latter, persuaded by the emergency situation, provides contact data (« Lead »), which will then be resold to third parties as potential customers.
3) Teleselling channel. After the contact, generated as mentioned in a deceptive method, the unfortunate arrives at another call center which, this time in a formally regular way, submits an offer and activates the contract on behalf of a third operator.

Because Iliad’s complaint

Lately, The Communications Guarantor Authority intervened with a contrast measure precisely at the CLI Spoofing and also The Antitrust A few weeks ago started a specific procedure for incorrect telemarketing. The idea of ​​Iliad, at the basis of the decision to present a complaint, is that spoofing is yes the means through which these scams are perpetrated, but that the problem must be eradicated to the root and, that is, identifying and pursuing the criminal supply chain that monetizes Lead obtained with lies, a real scam. For this reason, the company has filed the complaint to the Prosecutor and the case to AGCOM to ask to hit the business model since its origin, or « who has made contacts using false information that harm the image of the companies mentioned and consequently both transparency and trust in the market », as explained by Iliad’s CEO Benedetto Levi to Corriere.it.

« Frods of this type are now mass, » continues Levi. «It is our belief that These activities damage the reputation and trust of entire industrial supply chainsin addition to completely debasing the telephone sales channel. Our complaint « , concludes the CEO of Iliad, » aims to hit the cause of the phenomenon, namely the false and scams declarations through which these companies acquire, process and give in the personal data of users « .