tele-psychics go high tech

[The-Chronic]

years ago i did a computer project for a psychic call center in Durban, South Africa. i was young and needed the money, and naive enough to believe their gumph. (the usual excuses)

the system was supposedly for debt collection, but the purpose was obvious after seeing it in action.

there is an amazing amount of information you can find out instantly from just a phone number.
type yours in Google and see what comes up. or your name.

the central phone had caller id connected to a reverse directory service. the ‘psychic’ researchers had internet access, access to the bond registrar, credit bureau, estate office, deed office, medical insurance, etc. you can get a subscription to all these for just a few $$ a month if you are registered as a debt collector.
to pay them you would need to provide your i.d. or social security number... well...

as the call was being transferred the researcher would look up every bit of information possible on the phone number / i.d. (and real name if it checked out with the reverse directory listing).
many people put their house for sale online, so getting a picture of your home can be pretty easy. the first thing the psychics would say is, “i’m seeing something from the past... a blue roof, a red door, double story...” etc. safe, easy. that is usually all they needed to hook the client forever. chat rubbish for an hour and you’ve paid the rent.
another favourite line was, “you are struggling financially and need guidance.” thank you credit bureau for that. “a father figure has passed, a man of 67” - estate office.
psychic ‘artists’ can also get a copy of a deceased’s photo with relative ease.

with online privacy a thing of the past even your browsing habits can be tracked down to your name or phone number. websites frequently sell their cookies, and if you’ve signed up with a sell-thru forum you’ve given away your name, identity, and interests.
cross-referencing cookies is pretty trivial.
if you think google don’t have a file on you think again... every site you visit that has google ads or a google service lets google know you’ve been there. that sounds like conspiracy stuff but recently google were required to provide the browsing habits of a suspected felon... which they could do easily. in the hands of telepsychics this is a powerful weapon.

anyway, i created a system for them that had access to all this information. needless to say i was ‘healed’ of my naiveté by these telepsychics. they've disappeared now... like magic.

sigh, the things we do to pay the rent...

~Ed

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Thanks for the info. I think I. like many here, have suspected that this goes on but it's nice to have it confirmed.

[sophia8]

T-C, you'll have to pony up some proof for your story. This is a skeptics board, and we don't accept anecdotes as evidence.

[sophia8]

There are a number of reasons to be sceptical about this story.
First of all, psychic phone-readers these days work from home. Calls to the phone-line number are randomly redirected to their home number and the readers are paid with a percentage of the call charges; for the operators of these scams, it's far cheaper than running a call center, with employees.
So, nobody's sitting in front of a computer screen with instant access to dozens of confidential databases.
And even if they were, how long do you think it would take to call up these databases, sift through the information and extract anything useful? Longer than the call itself, probably - and the reader has to keep up a running conversation with the caller all the while.
There are plenty of ex-workers of these phone lines willing to spill the beans on the subterfuges and lies involved; none of them mention any form of hot-reading.

In any case, hot reading simply isn't needed. Just read a transcript of one of Sylvia Browne's phone reading to see how it's done - get the caller to tell you the problem, then fill up the rest of the time with meaningles but reassuring waffle.

[Cuddles]

Originally Posted by The-Chronic

there is an amazing amount of information you can find out instantly from just a phone number.
type yours in Google and see what comes up. or your name.

Nothing for any phone number and nothing until the third page for my name. Amazing.

Quote:

if you think google don’t have a file on you think again... every site you visit that has google ads or a google service lets google know you’ve been there. that sounds like conspiracy stuff but recently google were required to provide the browsing habits of a suspected felon... which they could do easily. in the hands of telepsychics this is a powerful weapon.

Google can trace IPs that have visited them, as can anyone else on the internet, they have no need to keep a "file" on anyone. As for adverts, these are guided by local cookies, not some master file on their server, unless you believe that they can magically tell who you are even when you're on a different computer.

All in all I am very sceptical about your story. Aside from the fact that it shows a very limited understanding of the internet, which would seem odd in a omcputer programmer, it is also completely uneccessary. As Sophia says, cold reading is more than adequate for this sort of scam, so there is no need for anyone to waste money on this sort of thing, aside from the fact it would be wildly impractical and unlikely to provide any useful information anyway.

[Mangafranga]

From the results google gave me for my name I have lived a very full life, even having died a few times!

[sophia8]

Originally Posted by Mangafranga

From the results google gave me for my name I have lived a very full life, even having died a few times!

I lived a full and exciting life as a career Navy officer, serving on a WWII destroyer and collecting several medals on the way. Since I wasn't born until after the war, that was obviously a previous life!

[The-Chronic]

Originally Posted by sophia8

T-C, you'll have to pony up some proof for your story. This is a skeptics board, and we don't accept anecdotes as evidence.

Exactly why I joined the forum, to find out how to get that proof properly, and legally!
Any ideas?

The hotline story is sadly real (though I don't expect you to take my word for it, that would not be CT!), the google one based on a CNN/Fox report recently.

In SA it takes about 10-20 seconds to pull up detailed information on you given your ID / social security number. Credit card companies do it hundreds of times a day. Any bank employee has access to this system too. In SA its called Experian/NLR/CCheck/SAFPS,etc - experian.co.za. Monthly subscription - $100. Any company may apply.
Remember, not every psychic fraudster works the same way.
Sex chatlines use it too ( DON'T ASK ME how i know! Okay, i'll tell you, the psychic hotline was also a sex-chat hotline. the people would often swap roles. stop laughing, it isn't funny. <shame> ... and no, i never answered the phones. )

( I've split this post into a google conspiracy one just for kicks )

[sophia8]

Originally Posted by The-Chronic

Exactly why I joined the forum, to find out how to get that proof properly, and legally!
Any ideas?

Um - it was you came here and posted this story. You didn't ask anything - you claimed it to be so. You seemed to be saying you had the proof.

Quote:

The hotline story is sadly real (though I don't expect you to take my word for it,

Exactly - so give us some evidence of it.

Quote:

In SA it takes about 10-20 seconds to pull up detailed information on you given your ID / social security number. Credit card companies do it hundreds of times a day. Any bank employee has access to this system too. In SA its called Experian/NLR/CCheck/SAFPS,etc - experian.co.za. Monthly subscription - $100. Any company may apply.

That's pretty much how credit checking works here in the UK (we have Experian here too). However, you DO have to give full name, birthdate, address etc for the person you're requesting a check on. You don't get that from a reverse-number check (and the person might be calling from a mobile, or from somebody else's phone). And a credit check doesn't give you details like relatives' names and so on.
In any case, all this online checking takes TIME - a lot more than just a couple of seconds. A phone psychic isn't going to tell a caller "Oh dear, the vibrations are very low right now - could you just call back in half an hour when I've cleared my chakras?" to give them time to comb through databases.
You mentioned sex lines - well, they're run along exactly the same lines as psychic lines (sometimes by the same companies). The women work from home; they choose the hours and days they work, get allocated randomly-chosen calls during those times and receive a percentage of the call charges.
As I said, hot reading simply isn't needed. The job of the phone psychic is not to give information, but to keep the caller on the line - and paying hefty call charges - for as long as possible. Cold reading is ideal for that - a cold reader can take two or three minutes to come up with the name of a deceased relative; after that, there's still the relative's pets, birthday, hobbies, illnesses and favourite music to go at.
It might actually be counter-productive to give the caller accurate information. After you've named all their recently dead relatives, told them to go easy on the high-fat foods, and warned them the company they work for might be going bust, you'll probably still have a big chunk of your allocated minimum call-time left to fill.

The psychic-network company doesn't give a toss about the content of the calls, as they're only interested in the call revenues. As long as the call lasts the required minimum of minutes, the psychic and the caller could be swapping recipes, for all they care.

They may do things differently in SA, but that's how it's done in the UK and the US.

[Fnord]

I don't have proof to offer, only personal experience.

Here in the States, it's pretty much as Sophia said...

Quote:

"First of all, psychic phone-readers these days work from home. Calls to the phone-line number are randomly redirected to their home number and the readers are paid with a percentage of the call charges; for the operators of these scams, it's far cheaper than running a call center, with employees.
So, nobody's sitting in front of a computer screen with instant access to dozens of confidential databases.
And even if they were, how long do you think it would take to call up these databases, sift through the information and extract anything useful? Longer than the call itself, probably - and the reader has to keep up a running conversation with the caller all the while."

In other countries, like the EU, and moreso in Africa (Nigeria) and Asia (Indonesia), it's pretty much as The-Chronic said...

Quote:

"the central phone had caller id connected to a reverse directory service. the ‘psychic’ researchers had internet access, access to the bond registrar, credit bureau, estate office, deed office, medical insurance, etc. you can get a subscription to all these for just a few $$ a month if you are registered as a debt collector.
to pay them you would need to provide your i.d. or social security number..."

Note that the "Social Security Number" is something else in other countries, or the systems run off only name, address, and phone number.

The "Psychic" usually needs these details for "accounting purposes."

A few concepts to keep in mind:

1) "Psychics" and other shysters are much more sophisticated nowadays than they were even 10 years ago ... if only they would put that "sophistication" to a better purpose...
2) A Seeker's need to believe in something often outweighs their desire for the truth.
3) There's a Seeker born every minute.

-Fnord of Dyscordia-

[sophia8]

Originally Posted by The-Chronic

Sex chatlines use it too ( DON'T ASK ME how i know! Okay, i'll tell you, the psychic hotline was also a sex-chat hotline. the people would often swap roles. stop laughing, it isn't funny. <shame> ... and no, i never answered the phones. )

Why would a sexchat-line company need to collect background information on callers??
And if you could collect that amount of personal information on callers, then you can forget about running chat-lines and go into the ID-fraud business instead!

[Mangafranga]

Originally Posted by sophia8

Why would a sexchat-line company need to collect background information on callers??

Originally Posted by The-Chronic

the ‘psychic’ researchers had internet access, access to the bond registrar, credit bureau, estate office, deed office, medical insurance, etc.

Too Late the Hero
Suture Self *warning* males may find this one painful

Originally Posted by sophia8

And if you could collect that amount of personal information on callers, then you can forget about running chat-lines and go into the ID-fraud business instead!

Or blackmail.