Swindlers Use Telephones, With Internet’s Tactics

Phone swindles are practically as old as the telephone itself. But new technology has led to an onslaught of Internet-inspired fraud tactics that try to use telephone calls to dupe millions of people or to overwhelm switchboards for essential public services, causing deep concern among law enforcement and other groups.

People, businesses and government agencies across the country are combating the new schemes, in which scammers use the Internet to send huge volumes of calls at the same time. Many of the attacks bombard individuals with automated requests for personal data, in a variation of their email-scam cousins. But others are more vicious, flooding entire phone systems when demands are not met, similar to some attacks against websites. “You can blast out 100 million calls from the comfort of your keyboard,” said Kati Daffan, a lawyer in the bureau of consumer protection at the Federal Trade Commission. For years, government officials have warned the public of e-mail frauds that request personal information, known as phishing. Over time, the public education has made it harder to trick people over email. But there has been less public outreach about similar new types of phone schemes, sometimes called vishing. Because making phone calls over the Internet is so inexpensive, the practice can be lucrative even if only a tiny percentage of the people provide information. Personal financial data obtained this way can be easily sold on the black market. Financial and government officials say it is unclear how much money is lost to such schemes.