TECHNOLOGY
March,24 Thursiday 2007

Thieves' New Tool: Caller ID (2/2)
What was supposed to help can now hurt us

Legitimate uses of spoofing?
A SpoofCard representative said its markets include legitimate users such as privte investigators, law enforcement, insurance agencies and lawyers. And Jack Vonder Heide, of Technology Briefing Centers, said, "There are very legitimate uses for caller ID modification." If someone is making a call from their cell phone, for example, and doesn't want the recipient to have the cell phone number, the caller could use spoofing technology to display their office number instead, he said.

Furthermore, if a law enforcement officer is trying to find a suspect and has reason to believe that person is at a particular residence, the investigator probably wouldn't want to place a call with telltale* police department information showing up on the caller ID. A SpoofCard representative who would only give his name as "George" said that if SpoofCard is "used illegally, we work with law enforcement to help them prosecute" the perpetrator*.

Reining in offenders
SpoofCard also is " in the process of compling a list of every financial institution and law enforcement phone number to block these numbers from being called through the service," George said. That way, SpoofCard users won't be able to call a bank and order a credit card as an impostor.

One technology security research firm believes that harmless or legitimate uses of caller ID spoofing are the exception rather than the rule. Lance James, chief technology officer for San Diego-based Secure Science Corp., testified in May that more than 75 percent of spoofed calls have a  malicious intent.

It is doubtful potential new laws will derail companies like SpoofCard, Vonder Heide said. They "may see [a] little dip in revenues, but my guess is the publicity" that any new law generated would just raise the consciousness of people who didn't even know that spoofing was possible and might like to try it.

Vocabulary Focus
telltale (adj) --- allowing a secret to become known
perpetrator (n) --- someone who has committed a crime or other harmful act
rein in (v phr) --- to control an emotion, activity or situation to prevent it from becoming too powerful