Call center outsourcing - Why any American can be spied upon.

[tecelote]

You may not even know that you are on an international call.

Call for help with a product you bought, rent a car, call about a rebate, the list goes on. Watch out for those 1-800 numbers, there's a good chance you're calling outside the country.

Plus, even domestic calls may be routed through Canada when call volumes are high.


Big Brother is alive and well in America! Liberty Be Damned. This is post 9/11.

[mrcheerful]

1. You forgot that 90% of all calls made to

FIA or SS as well as most information calls go to india then back to the states. So calls made inside the states will end up going from here to india back to the US.

[Epiphany4z]

2. I was talking to some

republican friends..they where talking about the wire tap and how it doesn't effect them they don't get calls from outside the us. I just looked up and said ..ya know I talk to india all the time since I bought my Dell computer....they all got quiet...I think they forgot about all the out sourced call center jobs. Jeeze if your late on a credit card the call and threaten you from india now.

[tecelote]

3. Good Point!

Don't get mad on the phone... one wrong word and you're a terrorist suspect!

Of course, my Republican friends never use such language.

[PoliticalJihad]

8. Suddenly you guys trust shrub to tell the truth.

Shrub says only calls in, or out of the U.S. are tapped. Any everyone believes him? This is the same man who told us that wire taps require a court order after he had already authorized the international wire taps.

So suddenly you guys are believing this man?

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

4. Yeah, this is one of the hazards of overseas call center outsourcing

An Indian buddy of mine mentioned that outsourcing of calls to India has been slowing way, way down because the security is way too shoddy, and it's too easy to eavesdrop on calls and get personal information.

There was in fact a major scandal a couple months ago, when a call center operator in India was actually selling the personal information of British clients out to the highest bidder, information that was in turn used for widespread fraud and identity theft. This particular call center worker was obviously in the minority in comparison to his colleagues who just do their job and maintain confidentiality, but he did do some serious damage. When the story his the British press, the British population was so enraged that most British companies have halted their overseas call center operations significantly, many pulled out altogether, for fear of being sued.

Sadly, we in the US appear to be equally if not more vulnerable to this, and our government and press far more acquiescent in allowing valuable customer information to be disseminated by overseas call centers, since the relative lack of security in many centers in India and Pakistan is, after all, one of the factors that makes those places much cheaper. If more centers in Bangalore were to demand tighter security, that would increase the cost of the call centers and, of course, cut into the profit margins of US companies. Even though the Indian centers themselves are perfectly happy to do this, there's far too much pressure from American execs to not institute such security measures, since they'd then be denied their latest $100 million bonus due to the higher security. Members of the MSM, of course, also save money in this regard so they're in no hurry to report on it. It should be a major scandal, but we don't hear much about it.

[Gman]

5. Hadn't even thought of this

But a call that is routed through another country before it completes is not an international call. The final destination of a call dialed from the US is what makes it an international call. And I say this as a former telephone company billing customer service rep.

I would think that the help lines answered overseas are a true international call whether you know it or not.

[Rene]

6. So True. I called Friday about a question on my Retiree

health care Info (yes I know how fortunate I am to still have retiree benefits....but I had to tap into them 6 years earlier that I'd thought, because I was laid off)....
Anyway....when I was going thru the ludicrous VRU....I listened to people with heavy accents (almost illegible) from about 4 different countries.
When I finally got a person to talk to, there was static on the line and it was one of those "can you hear me now exchanges". I finally hung up.

You're right....too much work has been sent overseas, so we're always on international calls when we dial a company.

[kurth]

7. It's sneaky. They try to camouflage it

by assigning American first names to their people, having clocks for the U.S. time zones, up-to-date weather reports for major U.S. cities, etc.

One time I got this fellow and he claimed he was in Texas. But he had NO earthly idea who Willie Nelson was, or what an F150 was.

[Vinca]

9. Hmmm - that never occurred to me. Good point.

The other day I reauthorized a credit card and the person on the other end of the phone had a distinct Indian accent.