Learn More about Cell Phone Security Problems

Advice from Marcus J. Ranum
CSO, Tenable Network Security, Inc.
http://www.tenablesecurity.com


There's a new scam going around where a company called
"ESBI" adds their monthly service fee to your phone
bill - $14.95 - for a "personal email box" that
you allegedly signed up for over the internet.

I don't look closely at my phone bill (that is
changing, NOW) and apparently these ESBI guys have
been quietly tacking on $14.95 to my monthly bill
for almost a year.

Check your phone bills carefully. Make sure that
if you have an ESBI charge on there that you call
them and keep after them; the calls ring to a call
center in India. When I talked to them, they had
all my personal information, except a bogus Email
address ("Oh, well that would explain why you did
not get our notification that we had enabled the
service as you requested...")

I just spent a half hour on the phone with Verizon's fraud
people. There are several things that you can do, with any
phone service you have. First and foremost, you can call
your customer service and ask for a "cramming block" -
which they have to offer for free to all customers. Once
you request the block, no additional services can be
added to your account unless you initiate it through
the phone company or remove the block. (One would ask
"why is this not the default?" but you know why)

Another term of art to know is "recourse" - apparently
it has been turned into a verb; If you have trouble
with a scammer like ESBI, you can have the phone company
unroll the charges by asking them to "recourse the charge"
and they should. That leaves the scammers with the
option of billing you directly and, if they do, take
it up with your public service commission.

Credit card "fraud alerts" can be submitted and block
issuance of new credit by red-flagging your account
with equifax. Those EXPIRE EVERY THREE MONTHS. I make
a point of putting my alert back in place every three
months when it expires. (The "lifelock.com" service
that is raking in millions of $$ does exactly this and
no more) see:
http://www.fraudalerts.equifax.com/



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