Telkomsel Share Vid of Busted Simbox Operation

You do not often get to see videos that show the technology confiscated from a simbox fraudster, so I thought I would share this oddity from Telkomsel, one of the leading operators in Indonesia. The complete video is meant to promote the work of Telkomsel’s Corporate Finance team, which has four divisions including revenue assurance. The presentation of the work done by the RA team amusingly begins as a parody of a ‘breaking’ news segment on a television broadcast, but only talks about simbox fraud and nothing else. However, it ends with footage of equipment reportedly used by fraudsters in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city. Click on the video below to take a look; the button should take you straight to the revenue assurance segment, which begins at 42 seconds.

Update 21/2/2018 21:20 UTC: Telkomsel removed their video from YouTube soon after discovering the link from Commsrisk. A member of their team emailed to explain why:

Since this is not our (Telkomsel) official video and only for internal purpose only, I request your help to drop the article and link of the video from commsrisk.com to prevent any misunderstanding about this information from other people.

Hmmm. Did Telkomsel staff not understand that when videos are uploaded to YouTube they can be seen by anyone, anywhere, unless the uploader has chosen more restrictive privacy settings? It seems that a short piece about the telecoms tech used by criminals has morphed into an equally short piece about social media users not knowing how to control what information they share with the rest of the world!

Eric Priezkalns
Eric Priezkalns
Eric is the Editor of Commsrisk. Look here for more about the history of Commsrisk and the role played by Eric.

Eric is also the Chief Executive of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), a global association of professionals working in risk management and business assurance for communications providers.

Previously Eric was Director of Risk Management for Qatar Telecom and he has worked with Cable & Wireless, T‑Mobile, Sky, Worldcom and other telcos. He was lead author of Revenue Assurance: Expert Opinions for Communications Providers, published by CRC Press. He is a qualified chartered accountant, with degrees in information systems, and in mathematics and philosophy.