| Does that necessarily mean that there are no terrorist | | | | to a number of high threat countries such as Ethiopia, |
| communications happening, or does it simply mean that | | | | Somalia, UAE, and a few European countries. |
| terrorists have found other effective ways to get their | | | | One of the more interesting points in investigating the |
| twisted plots across continents? The advent of | | | | originating phone numbers was that most of them |
| prepaid calling cards and the proliferation of Voice | | | | were fake. With Internet technology, directing and |
| over IP telephony have made mobile phones almost | | | | redirecting calls from one IP to the next is as easy as |
| irrelevant. | | | | looking it up on Google. Indeed, with VoIP you can |
| In a case study, a prominent telecom company A | | | | easily have a local New York phone number literally |
| discovered that several thousand dollars worth of | | | | anywhere in the world. |
| phone time had been purchased using stolen credit | | | | The intent was to hide any and all trace of the |
| cards. Despite extremely heavy security, this company | | | | conversations. The extent of this operation is unknown; |
| still succumbed to the effective measures of people | | | | however it is certain that companies that had lax |
| who were clearly bent on obtaining airtime. The | | | | security measures lost thousands of dollars. The |
| subsequent tracking of IP's indicated that not only had | | | | chargeback's from the customers always hit the |
| the orders been placed using heavy IP masking, but | | | | merchants. What is certain is that people are making |
| that they originated from hacked computers and the | | | | phone calls to countries that harbor terrorists using |
| traced ended in Lebanon. Careful analysis of the Call | | | | stolen credit cards and high tech methods of masking |
| Records (CDR's) indicated that hundreds of phone | | | | the origin of their outgoing phone calls. |
| calls had been made using the same prepaid account | | | | |