TELECOM Digest     Thu, 9 Mar 2000 20:28:00 EST    Volume 20 : Issue 16

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Psychic Hotline Charges (Paul Cook)
    Symantec Threatens Legal Action Over I-Gear Report (Bennett)
    Persistent Mysterious Calls from Hell ... (Bill Phillips)
    Re: Long Lines Bells (Don Kimberlin)
    Keystroke Cops (Monty Solomon)
    Re: Australia; Wireless Phone Number Portability 3/2001 (David Clayton)
    What Can be Done When the LECs T1 Card Goes? (Dan Star)
    Siemens EWSP Switch (Joshua Walmsley)
    Re: Internet Content vs Internet Delivery (J.F. Mezei)
    DoubleClick Names Privacy Chiefs (Monty Solomon)
    Interesting Anomalies in Bell Canada Call Screen Service (GT Snoracer)

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Reply-To: Paul Cook <pcook@proctorinc.com>
From: Paul Cook <pcook@proctorinc.com>
Subject: Psychic Hotline Charges
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 15:56:18 -0800
Organization: Proctor & Associates, Inc.


Psychic hot line bill: $70,000
Thursday, March 9, 2000

By PAULO LIMA
Staff Writer
The Bergen Record

Had the telephone psychics been more clairvoyant, they might have told
Jeffrey Ochs they saw a big bill in his future.

As far as Bell Atlantic is concerned, Ochs himself should have seen it
coming: After all, he was calling an international number when he
repeatedly dialed up a psychic hot line over a seven-week period.

Ochs, of Hackensack, said the hot line operator told him, "We'll fix
your life," and encouraged him to keep calling back.

Ochs' troubles came to a head Feb. 15, when Hackensack police arrested
him on a complaint filed by Bell Atlantic, charging him with theft of
services for refusing to pay the bill.

According to the complaint, Ochs opened up accounts in five different
names in order to make hundreds of calls to the hot line, which
operates from the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, west of
Fiji.

The calls weren't cheap, averaging about $6 per minute.

"A half-hour call costs approximately $180," said Tom Cassidy, an
investigator with Bell Atlantic. "And they were one after another!"

Ochs, 49, who works for a job placement agency, has refused to pay for
the hot line calls, made between Nov. 15 and Jan. 7. Last week, he
filed a report with police seeking to charge Bell Atlantic with
deceptive business practices.

"I'm not sure if he's upset over the $70,000 or if it's because they
didn't fix his life," said Hackensack Deputy Police Chief Ed Koeser.

On Monday, Ochs and his attorney pursued the complaint in Hackensack
Municipal Court. But a hearing on whether they legally could file a
countercomplaint was postponed because Bell Atlantic wasn't
represented by an attorney.  A new hearing date had not yet been
scheduled.

"We think he should pay only for the long-distance charge and not for
the psychic hot line's fee for its services," said Ochs' lawyer,
Richard Galler. "In other words, he should pay whatever it costs to
make a regular call to Vanuatu."

Galler contends the psychic hot line is not entitled to collect a fee
because it never provided a service.  Instead, he said, the psychics
exploited his client.

"He tells them he has emotional problems, and they repeatedly
encourage him to call back," Galler said.  He refused to elaborate.

Ochs, who is single, said he saw an advertisement for the service in
TV Guide. Sandwiched between larger displays for the Psychic Source
and the Professional Psychic Loveline on the magazine's last page, the
two-line "Psychic Hotline" ad promises "live 1-to-1 readings."

"They don't even have the rate" in the ad, Ochs said.  "It said,
'international rates apply' -- whatever that means."

Soraya Rodriguez, a Bell Atlantic spokeswoman, said the company is not
Ochs' long-distance carrier and does not decide the charge.

"Whatever the long-distance carrier tells us to charge, that's what we
bill them," Rodriguez said.

Galler said Ochs' long-distance carrier is Sprint, whose charge for a
call to Vanuatu -- regardless of whether it's to a psychic hot line, a
private residence, or another business -- ranges from about $7 per
minute to $3.71 per minute with the company's international plan,
under which the caller pays a $5.95 monthly fee.

Such disputes over bills ordinarily result when parents discover that
their teenage children have been calling phone sex lines. Yet large
psychic hot line tabs are not unheard of.

Cassidy, the investigator, said he worked a case years ago in which a
Central Jersey woman ran up more than $50,000 in psychic hot line
charges.

And last year, a Los Angeles man reportedly made a staggering $120,000
worth of calls to a psychic hot line.

Telephone industry experts emphasized, however, that the high bills do
not necessarily reflect the psychic hot line's fee.

International long-distance rates depend largely on pre-negotiated
contracts between U.S.  long-distance carriers -- such as AT&T, MCI,
and Sprint -- and the local telephone company in the destination
country, said Teresa Evert of Concert, a joint venture between AT&T
and British Telecom.

Long-distance carriers pay Vanuatu International Telephone Co. a
$2-per-minute settlement rate, which is what the Vanuatu company
charges to complete the call.

The rate is one of the highest in the world, said Evert, adding that
most Western European countries charge settlement rates under 10 cents
per minute.

The high settlement rates have attracted psychic and phone sex lines
to the island country in recent years, Evert said. By offering to
bring in more calls, the services negotiate deals with the Vanuatu
telephone company for their cut of the American dollars.

American carriers say they do not add on any extra fees for sex lines
or psychic hot lines.

"We charge the same price for any standard, direct-dial call to
Vanuatu," Evert said.



Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 08:48:23 -0600
From: bennett@peacefire.org
Subject: Symantec Threatens Legal Action Over I-Gear Report
Reply-To: peacefire-press@iain.com


Our report on I-Gear at:
 http://peacefire.org/censorware/I-Gear/igdecode/ has attracted
the attention of Symantec's lawyers, who sent a fax to our ISP
demanding that they remove our link to the I-Gear blocked site list on
Symantec's server:

http://peacefire.org/censorware/I-Gear/igdecode/symantec-to-media3.3-1-2000.
txt

Our report provided a means to download the list of 470,000 sites
blocked by I-Gear and decrypt the list with the "igdecode" codebreaker
program.  We looked at the first 50 .edu URL's blocked under
"pornography" that were still working, and found that 38 of them were
mistakes:

 http://peacefire.org/censorware/I-Gear/igear-blocked-edu.html

The blocked pages included a 75 K page written entirely in Latin, a
description of a milking machine system written in Spanish, and
volumes 4 and 6 of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" -- but
NOT volumes 1, 2, 3, and 5 (even though these were linked from the
same index page), since apparently all the "good parts" are in volumes
4 and 6.

(Before our report was pubilshed, we also sent mail to a few contacts
asking them to download I-Gear's list, and act as "witnesses" in case
I-Gear removed the list and claimed our report was fabricated.)  We
also found that the I-Gear installer retrieves your "real name" and
"company name" from Windows registration information on your computer,
and secretly sends this data back to Symantec -- apparently in
violation of the privacy policy on Symantec's Web site.

Symantec is demanding that we remove the links to their server, which
we have not done.  However, Symantec did move the blocked-site list on
their server, so the link from our page no longer works.  (More
precisely, the link contains a serial number that has to be verified
before the list can be downloaded, and Symantec de-activated that
serial number to stop the link from working.)

We believe that the issue at stake is the right to criticize software
by looking "under the hood", and to allow others to verify your
findings.  By decrypting the list, in addition to the 76% error rate
for .edu pages, we found that portions of the Web sites of the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU.org), the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF.org), the Center for Democracy and Technology
(CDT.org), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC.org), and
the Censorware Project (Censorware.org) were blocked by I-Gear in its
"pornography" category.  On the other hand, none of the major
pro-censorship groups (enough.org, frc.org, afa.net, fotf.org, etc.)
had portions of their Web sites blocked.  Regardless of whether those
anti-censorship sites got on the list by accident, the results suggest
a bias in the blocked-site database -- which never would have been
discovered without decrypting the list.

Peacefire has never altered any content on our Web site as a result of
legal threats.  Our report on I-Gear will stay up, and we will post
updates to our Web site regarding the legal situation.

For more information: email bennett@peacefire.org or call (425) 649 9024;
I'll be in most of the day.  We also have a list of lawyers, lobbyists, and
activists on the pro- and anti-side of the blocking software debate, at:
 http://www.peacefire.org/info/press.html
complete with email and phone numbers, if you're looking for statements
from other people and organizations.


 -Bennett

bennett@peacefire.org     http://www.peacefire.org
(425) 649 9024



From: wfp@ziplink.net (Bill Phillips)
Subject: Persistent Mysterious Calls from Hell ...
Organization: ShoeString Projects, Cambridge, MA
Reply-To: wfp@ziplink.net (Bill Phillips)
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 05:44:11 GMT


[The following came from a friend of mine in Washington state. I've
left her name off. I figure someone among all you phone gurus has the
answer ... Right?]

I'm trying to be patient and not paranoid. (which fortunately, I'm
generally not very paranoid.)

There's a number that keeps calling me, about 6:00 p.m. or so, which
is usually when I am out feeding or working with horses.

The operator and the phone company can't tell me anything about it
(won't?  they say they don't know the interchange...YOU'RE THE
FREAKIN' PHONE COMPANY!!!! GRRRR....).

I've tried reverse directories InfoSpace, AnyWho, and ThinkPC411.

The number is 509-533-1504.  509 is eastern washington; I'm in a 509
as well.  But the 533 interchange isn't listed anywhere.

When I call the number back, I either get a busy signal or it just
rings and rings forever (and boy, have I let it ring!).

It could be a "switch" number -- like, when I get a call from our
hospital to my house, it might be any number, and not match any of the
"real" outgoing numbers, because all our calls get routed through a
switch.

So maybe it's a big telemarketer ... but I sure wish I could figure it
out ... it's starting to freak me out.  Of course they never leave a
message.

I guess what's weirding me out is that they keep calling; about 6
times or so in the last 3 weeks.

Any ideas for figuring out more about this?  I'd just like to know if
I'm being stalked by a telemarketer or a real person (vicious point
intended).



Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 22:25:52 -0500
From: Don Kimberlin <dkimberlin@prodigy.net>
Subject: Re: Long Lines Bells


In article Sun, 05 Mar 2000 16:17:18 -0600  Grover C. McCoury III
(grover@corvia.com) wrote:

> I dusted off my copy of the "Bell Labs Bible", Engineering and

> Operations in the Bell System, and found the following definition:


> The Long Lines Department of AT&T owns and operates long distance

> transmission facilities and certain switching systems to provide

> connections between operating companies and with foreign countries.

> Long Lines, being an operating organization, is the largest part of AT&T,

> with about 90% of all AT&T personnel.


> AT&T was organized as follows:

> ______________________________________

>  AT&T

>    General Depts. Long Lines Dept

>  ______________________________________

>          | | |

>  Western Electric | Bell Operating Companies(24 BOCs)

>           | |

>           | |

>    ------ |

>           | |

>   Bell Telephone**  Laboratories


> ** - BTL is 50% owned by Western Electric and 50% owned by AT&T


That's a good book and a good list.  I tell people that
pre-divestiture, Long Lines was the "25th RBOC," seeing as its
function was to run the intercompany lines between all the others.  In
the original Bell System setup, Long Lines in fact collected _all_ the
money from the RBOCs who had to do the local connecting, provide many
interstate operator services, bill and flow the money through -- and
originally, got only a measly flat twenty-five cents for their work at
each end, while AT&T kept _all_ the rest -- and that in a day when
"long distance" was a large portion of a dollar per minute! The RBOCs,
by comparison, were mere "tax farms" for 195 Broadway, and the
attitude of their personnel toward Long Lines employees generally
showed it.

When DDD came along and the plant got automated, profitability
skyrocketed even further.  It should be no wonder that interlopers
like MCI finally cracked the code and found out there was so much
profit anybody could do it...


Donald Kimberlin, NCE



Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 01:11:26 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Keystroke Cops


New software raises troubling questions on worker privacy

By Michael J. McCarthy
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL    

March 7 - The American workplace has been put on notice that office
computers can be monitored. But who could have imagined the keystroke
cops?

IN A NEW THREAT to personal privacy on the job, some companies have
begun using surveillance software that covertly monitors and records
each keystroke an employee makes: every letter, every comma, every
revision, every flick of the fingertip, regardless of whether the data
is ever saved in a file or transmitted over a corporate computer
network. As they harvest those bits and bytes, the new programs,
priced at as little as $99, give employers access to workers'
unvarnished thoughts - and the potential to use that information for
their own ends.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/378768.asp?cp1=1



From: David Clayton <dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au>
Subject: Re: Australia; Wireless Phone Number Portability 3/2001
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 19:39:36 +1100
Organization: Customer of Connect.com.au Pty. Ltd.
Reply-To: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au


David Lind <davidlind@my-deja.com> contributed the following:

> Sooo glad to have this forum and the moderater back!!


> The Aussies have mandated wireless phone number portability to be implemented

> in 12 months. So what is holding us up?


> storypath=News/Story_2000_03_06.NRdb@2@5@3@5&path=News/Category.NRdb@2@14@2@1
">http://cnniw.newsreal.com/cgi-bin/NewsService?osform_template=pages/cnniwStory&ID=cnniw&storypath=News/Story_2000_03_06.NRdb@2@5@3@5&path=News/Category.NRdb@2@14@2@1


It may be in legislation, but the established carriers have been
"dragging their feet" in agreeing how it is to happen, but:

 .........

On 1 October 1999, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
determined that full number portability for mobile phone numbers
(excluding analogue AMPS mobiles) should be available in Australia,
and directed the ACA (Australian Communications Authority) to set the
earliest practicable date for its implementation. Mobile number
portability is the ability of a customer to change their mobile
service provider, while keeping their existing mobile phone number.

To assist in setting the implementation date for mobile number
portability, the ACA released a discussion paper in December 1999
seeking public comment.

Following consideration of the responses to this paper, the ACA will 
release a report in early March 2000, outlining the ACA's preliminary
view of an appropriate implementation date for mobile number
portability. After inviting further comment, the ACA will finalise its
report by late April 2000 and announce the implementation date for
mobile number portability.
 .............


Regards,

David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Dilbert's words of wisdom #18: Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.



Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 18:44:52 -0600
From: Dan Star <danstar@execpc.com>
Reply-To: danstar@execpc.com
Organization: ETCO
Subject: What Can be Done When the LECs T1 Card Goes?


We had a site coneected via Frame relay go down in the morning due to
a faulty T1 card provided by the Ameritech LEC.  The Frame service
itself is provided by MCIWorldCom.  It took the LEC until 8 pm that
night to fix it.  Can either party be held responsible for this?  How
should a customer respond to this occurence?


Dan



From: Joshua Walmsley <joshua_walmsley@dingoblue.net.au>
Subject: Siemens EWSP Switch
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 22:35:51 +1100
Organization: Optus Internet


Hi, I am looking for information relating to the EWSD switch family.  I
have searched and all I have been able to get is two pages from Siemens
web site.  Can somone point me in the direction of information. What I
am looking for is setup information, case studies how some compaines
have theirs setup..etc.



From: JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vl.videotron.ca>
Subject: Re: Internet Content vs Internet Delivery
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 23:16:50 -0500


Felix Deutsch wrote:

> You are mislead by thinking that AOL is a mere ISP, thus just offering

> full-IP connectivity.  I would think that many AOL subscribers spend a

> significant amount of their online time using services provided by AOL

> and not the WWW in general.


But what advantage is there for CNN to restrict content to AOL-only
subscribers ? If the goal is to have more eyeballs, shouldn't CNN push to be
on the world-wide-web and get eyeballs from any ISP in the world instead of
just AOL with a proprietary product available only on AOL ?



Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 22:22:27 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: DoubleClick names privacy chiefs


http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/current/netdaily.htx

By Frank Barnako, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 2:10 PM ET Mar 8, 2000 

Internet advertising services firm DoubleClick (DCLK) moved Wednesday
to quell controversy about its data collection and tracking procedures
by hiring two prominent consumer protection experts.

Jules Polonetsky, New York City's Consumer Affairs Commissioner, has
signed on as DoubleClick's Chief Privacy Officer. Former New York
State attorney general Robert Abrams will chair a Privacy Advisory
Board for the company. "DoubleClick is dedicated to both guaranteeing
user privacy and delivering effective online advertising that will
keep the Internet free," said the firm's president, Kevin Ryan. He
said Polonetsky will act as an ombudsman for Internet users, working
with clients to institute and police their privacy policies.



From: gt_snoracer@my-deja.com
Subject: Interesting Anomalies in Bell Canada Call Screen Service
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 21:16:43 GMT
Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy.


My neighbor, who is a single mother with two year old twins and a six
year old, has been facing non-stop harassment from collection agents
thanks to debts ran up by her deadbeat ex husband, who has fled back to
Iran.

Since her job entails that she answer the phone at all times, she was
at her wits end with them calling late or early and waking the
children.  when she found out i used to work in the field and talked to
me, i explained some strategies, particularly with Bell's call screen
service, that could cut down on these calls from these psychological
terrorists.  (And that's really what they are ... but I digress ...)

The agents usually call with the the call display number blocked or
unknown, but call screen seems to work with a surprising amount of
them.  Most have ceased. One interesting thing I have noticed, however,
is that two numbers, CollectCorp [(416) 961-9622] and The Collection
House [(416) 447-0060] do not work with the system.

So the question I have ... is Bell in bed with those two companies? (Or
one company perhaps ... these agencies are notorious for using shell
companies to cloak operations.)

and how effective is a service like this, which is advertised as
allowing people to escape harassment (and it's a clear case of it
here)?

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



End of  TELECOM Digest V20 #15

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