[plug] [OT| growing VOIP -> POTS spam problem

[Milan Pospisil]

On 6/1/05, Chris Caston <caston at arach.net.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 12:57, Shayne O'Neill wrote:
> > > If you should be abusing the "living daylight" out of anyone it should
> > > be the people that run the cold-calling sweat shop instead of giving
> > > these people real jobs.
> >
> > I concur. However, I must confess having recently been woken up at about
> > 2am by *PRERECORDED* off-shore phone advertisement with a return number
> > that was one
> > of those 50c per minute timed call things I found myself *deeply* wishing
> > I HAD someone to abuse.
> >
> 
> Yes the most annoying thing about those is that just hanging up doesn't
> get rid of them. The call does not end until the other end hangs up so
> in the meantime you can't use your line.
> 
> This is a really bad DoS attack against someones (or a businesses) phone
> line.

  There used to be a relay which would time out after 90 seconds
preventing  blocking of the line if one of the participants did not
hang up. I believe that this  measure is still being implemented as
long as a landline is part of the circuit.
So theoretically they should be able to DoS attack your home number
for 90 sec. only, provided that the relay does work properly . They
used to have the bad habit to pick up some stray current from
somewhere and not drop out.

> regards,
> 
> Chris
> 
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