Possible Abuse of SipBroker Numbers

[Lanh]

I don't know whether this will be considered a legitimate use of SipBroker or not but this evening there have been numerous people using the SipBroker access numbers to access the SipPhone conference system and use it as a "free" chatroom service.

Whether or not this is a legitimate use or not I am not entirely sure like I said, but I would guess that they're tying up an awful lot of lines which people use genuinely for chatting to those of us who are primarily SiP based, to do nothing other than scream abuse at each other and anybody they come across in the conference systems they are aware of as I and a few friends found out this evening.

We were eventually able to hold a discussion after hurriedly emailing a conference room on another system between ourselves.

Is this a legitimate use or is this the kind of thing that should be reported?

The rooms are accessable via SipBroker prefix *7471222 for reference.

[emoci]

Originally Posted by Carl.

I don't know whether this will be considered a legitimate use of SipBroker or not but this evening there have been numerous people using the SipBroker access numbers to access the SipPhone conference system and use it as a "free" chatroom service.

Whether or not this is a legitimate use or not I am not entirely sure like I said, but I would guess that they're tying up an awful lot of lines which people use genuinely for chatting to those of us who are primarily SiP based, to do nothing other than scream abuse at each other and anybody they come across in the conference systems they are aware of as I and a few friends found out this evening.

We were eventually able to hold a discussion after hurriedly emailing a conference room on another system between ourselves.

Is this a legitimate use or is this the kind of thing that should be reported?

The rooms are accessable via SipBroker prefix *7471222 for reference.

Well, the Conference Room service from Gizmo has been there for a relatively long while, my only worry is if for some reason it got more popular, especially accessing it via SipBroker

It is definitely good to keep updated on how SipBroker is being used and how it may impact us, the basic SIP users in general, but it seems to me this is one of those iffy situations where you risk banning legitimate use along with abusers

The only thing I can think of is to limit continuous call length to something like 45 minutes - 1 hour to try deterring some of these possible abuse cases....

All in all though, these are just thoughts, I am not sure whether the Gizmo Chat Rooms have a large enough impact on the system overall to cause concern, Craig and Martin can probably convey a better idea if this is cause for concern...

[Lanh]

Yeah, it's been gradually going on for a while.

At first it wasn't too bad when normal users (those on the phone only) came on, some of them were pretty decent but tonight was absolutely horrendous, it was just constant abuse , arguing, music, sound effects and general disruption, and they followed us from room to room to do it too, hence resorting to mass mailing genuine participants.

Not sure if the 1hr thing would work too well to be honest, they seem to be mostly UK users who have to get free calls to the numbers for up to an hour, so they're probably re-dialing anyway.

I just thought I would report it to see what the score was because it was incredibly frustrating trying to have our scheduled conference call, some American SIP users on the FWD Coffee House have also reported the same disruption on the SiPhone network when I have been talking to them in the Coffee House (which incidentally seems to be completely unaffected).

If nothing can be done, we'll just have to migrate to another system for our chats I guess. It would be so much simpler if the SiPPhone system had some kind of moderation tools.

[emoci]

Originally Posted by Carl.

Yeah, it's been gradually going on for a while.

At first it wasn't too bad when normal users (those on the phone only) came on, some of them were pretty decent but tonight was absolutely horrendous, it was just constant abuse , arguing, music, sound effects and general disruption, and they followed us from room to room to do it too, hence resorting to mass mailing genuine participants.

Not sure if the 1hr thing would work too well to be honest, they seem to be mostly UK users who have to get free calls to the numbers for up to an hour, so they're probably re-dialing anyway.

I just thought I would report it to see what the score was because it was incredibly frustrating trying to have our scheduled conference call, some American SIP users on the FWD Coffee House have also reported the same disruption on the SiPhone network when I have been talking to them in the Coffee House (which incidentally seems to be completely unaffected).

If nothing can be done, we'll just have to migrate to another system for our chats I guess. It would be so much simpler if the SiPPhone system had some kind of moderation tools.

This is probably off topic but, did they just guess your Conference Room number?

[Lanh]

The first one yes, then we just tried changing rooms a couple of times, just saying "Move to room XXX", then they followed, after a couple of times, I sent out the mail.

[Lanh]

This thread may as well be locked. SiPPhone seem to permit that kind of behaviour on their network so my friends and I have ceased to use SiPPhone and have all started to use a different SiP provider and their own conference solution which is not able to be accessed via SiPBroker.

[andy]

with 10 million guesses possible, I'm surprised they could find you

[Lanh]

There are more rooms on the system than 10m Andy. You can start with 2220 and go all the way to 50 extra digits at least. I guess we were in a pretty generic room number to start with, we just didn't expect them to follow us from the room when we moved, they even played recordings of the UK telephone hold message to fool us into thinking that they weren't able to hear, so another room number was suggested, everybody redialed only to find the idiots already in there abusing us as we arrived in that third room.

Like I said though, it's all academic now, those who had their softphone have gotten rid of it and we're now using a different provider without SiPBroker access. I feel sorry for the others left behind to deal with them but if they have any sense they'll leave the SP conference system too just let those phone loons scream abuse at each other or the recording which is played in empty rooms. :lol:

[andy]

Oh, I didn't realise; I sort of assumed that the numbers were the same length as ordinary phone numbers

I've called a random extension there, just to see if it was possible, and later recommended it to a friend who asked me if I knew anything about Rebtel and then had a couple of odd connections with them

Is there a specific reason to suspect the abuse issues there you've experienced are due to Sipbroker access?

[Lanh]

Yep, those who were following us put us on hold and the BT "Please hold the line" message came on, the one I mentioned as being friendly has also told me that they are using the SiPBroker access numbers (London, Manchester and Birmingham they said). It would appear they don't know the others.