IP Relay Abuse Out Of Hand (original) (raw)

from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept

A few people have written in pointing to Broadband Reports’ short article outlining how a variety of people are abusing the IP Relay service, designed to help hearing impaired people communicate over the phone by providing text messages over the internet, which are then read by operators to the designated phone number. Because it helps the hearing impaired, the FCC has ordered that carriers get reimbursed for IP Relay calls. However, this has obviously opened up quite a loophole, and rather than being used by the hearing impaired to make calls, it’s being abused by some to make free calls, by kids getting operators to read out whatever message they want, and (of course) by Nigerian scammers. As Broadband Reports notes, there’s little incentive for the companies providing IP Relay services to crack down on the abuse, because they’re getting reimbursed by the FCC on each call. Someone even suggests that nearly 90% of IP Relay calls has to do with frauds or scams — all paid for with your tax dollars.