The Conference Coach™

Don’t ask, don’t tell is a very well known policy in the military.  However, did you know it also applies to conferencing?  People, especially Skype users and those in foreign countries, have gotten very aggressive about hacking into a conferencing service and then using that service to rack up and resell tons of long distance minutes internationally.

It’s not even that hard.  They get a dial in number and moderator ID which companies sometimes post on the Internet and keep surfing until they can unlock the ID with a moderator code.  Then, it’s off to the races – they sell access and dial out and rack up a ton of international long distance.

So what’s this have to do with “don’t ask, don’t tell”.  If you use some of the larger services like InterCall, they have very limited ability to detect and prevent fraud.  If a customer calls them with unexplained charges on their invoice, they’ll certainly look into and fix the problem.  But what about if this usage goes undetected.  I’m positive that there are a number of companies out there that don’t find the fraud, don’t ask and certainly InterCall doesn’t tell.