eyes on the prize

[Garylisk]

I work for Verizon Fraud Control. In the next area over from me is MCI Block Inquiry Services, which is being dissolved since Verizon and MCI merged. The BIS employees are going to become Fraud Control employees, but their duties will be different, here's how:

They will be monitoring Verizon and (I think) Comcast internet customers data transmissions with the aide of software the sniffs packets of data and tries to identify downloads of copyrighted materials. Several big name industries are teaming with us on this to help identify their material for the software.

Anyway, if potentially illegal transmissions are detected, they will call the customer and ask them if they were aware of possibly illegal data being transferred to their internet connection, and from that point they'd have to go into finding out if it was from a website posing as a legal route to get this data, if the person's kids were doing it, etc... and so on.

Beyond the fact that it's being monitored, though, I don't know what actions are going to be taken. If it's anything like the telephone side of things where I work - we block peoples' long distance until we can contact them about possibly fraudulent calls - maybe they'll be shutting off peoples' internet.

Who knows. I think it's silly and a waste of manpower and money.