Stealing VoIP Minutes

[eric]

Newsweek published an article, Stealing Minutes, highlighting carrier VoIP minute theft by phreakers.

Phreakers steal the minutes and resell them on the black market.

The author contacted us a few weeks ago and we provided him with some contacts.

[ymhee_bcex]

Being neither a telecom company nor a phreaker, I am obviously no expert on the subject. However when the article says "These thieves steal 200 million minutes a month, worth $26 million" or 13 cents per minute - my hype radars go up!

[DracoFelis]

Originally Posted by ymhee_bcex

However when the article says "These thieves steal 200 million minutes a month, worth $26 million" or 13 cents per minute - my hype radars go up!

It easily could be plausible.

After all, while domestic minutes in say the USA/Canada are usually worth much less than 13 cents per minute (sometimes as low as 1 cent per minute, or less), it's easily to believe that a significant portion of stolen minutes are for costly international calls (because at least some thieves would know that is where the money is to be made). So even if a lot of the minutes stolen are only worth say 1 cent per minute, it wouldn't take too many calls to several dollars a minute locations to significantly raise the "average" value of the minutes stolen (and yes, there are still places in the world that cost several dollars a minute to call)...

[Darksat]

Originally Posted by ymhee_bcex

Being neither a telecom company nor a phreaker, I am obviously no expert on the subject. However when the article says "These thieves steal 200 million minutes a month, worth $26 million" or 13 cents per minute - my hype radars go up!

I wonder how much the phreakers actually get?
I would say its a lot less than that.

[EvilGod]

wow, another voip security information. Cool. thanks for sharing.