The operators of the black industry chain behind the free traffic lose hundreds of millions every year
Behind the "free traffic" is actually a black industrial chain.
"Free traffic" products flooded
On an e-commerce platform, the reporter entered "free traffic" and found nearly 3000 pieces of product information, with the following three typical products:
The first product is called "free unlimited traffic mobile phone", and the price is about a few hundred yuan. The merchants described it as follows: "What this mobile phone cares about is that the card plus core technology has nothing to do with the model and quality of the mobile phone. This mobile phone is integrated with the phone and the card, and does not need to recharge any additional fees. It can be used directly by turning on the hot spot, which is easy to operate. Up to 8 devices can be connected," the merchants said, The supply of mobile phone traffic is based on the server terminal to realize remote acceptance of the network, without deducting any traffic and phone charges in the card.
The second product is "unlimited traffic software", which costs only 1 yuan. According to the introduction, the seller will give the buyer an account and password. Every time the software logs in or connects, it may consume about 50KB of mobile phone package traffic. The mobile phone's own software allows a small amount of traffic in the background. A seller said: "Our company has contracted monthly traffic and traffic pool through cooperation with China Mobile, and developed a traffic distribution system through our technology to achieve unlimited use of traffic."
In addition, there are also businesses that sell "free flow scanning tutorials", with a price of 9.9 yuan. On the store's page, there is not much introduction about the product, but only the words: "The store has cooperated with the studio, and the success rate of the new tutorials obtained from the studio is more than 99%. It will update the tutorials irregularly, and will not charge any fees. It will be purchased for permanent use at one time." Since no response from customer service,
Drilling operator loopholes
When we first saw these products, people would mistakenly think that these kinds of products were produced through cooperation between businesses and operators.
It is understood that in order to improve services for users, operators have always had free directional traffic. A large number of Internet companies cooperate with operators. Both parties share the cost of traffic and provide users with targeted free traffic for designated services. Operators can not only improve users' mobile internet experience and mobile network stickiness, but also increase traffic access, form users' traffic usage habits, and thus bring business revenue such as charging content.
In order to avoid loopholes and risks, the operator will clearly distinguish whether users use traffic free services or normal Internet access services. Usually, the operator will add the IP address of the server of the stream free service to the white list. When visiting the white list website, you can access the Internet for free without charging for access. Even in order to simplify the maintenance complexity, you can directly carry out labeling authentication.
However, such a way has been used by illegal traders as a tool to seek benefits. According to the technicians, traffic sellers only need to apply for a VPS virtual machine on the Internet, build a virtual private network server (VPN), and then through an uncomplicated disguise, they can make operators think that the traffic of this VPN request comes from the operator's traffic free website. In this way, the VPN traffic they control is paid by the operator. Later, by controlling VPN account permissions, traffic resellers can sell operators' "free traffic" to users at a low price.
Loss of billions every year
Last year, the domestic vulnerability reporting platform, Wuyun, announced that operators have set up a white list free of traffic charges in order to provide convenience for customers. When the billing system detects that users are visiting a website in the white list or receiving multimedia messages, it will not deduct fees. If the vulnerability expands, operators will lose too much.
Some insiders of the operator
In this regard, Fu Liang, an independent telecom analyst, believes that this vulnerability is actually the use of free channels for some special applications, but the space for simulation is limited, and the resulting loss is not large for operators. The relevant person in charge of China Telecom said that the specific number of traffic losses caused by illegal traders' "stealing" traffic has not been calculated yet. However, some experts believe that the gray industrial chain of "free traffic" has formed a scale. If it develops at this speed, it will cause considerable property losses to operators. According to estimates, The total loss of the three major operators on this issue will be hundreds of millions every year.
It is reported that Beijing Unicom has modified its billing mode to shield some of the current directional traffic flow free schemes, and other operators have also carried out comprehensive filtering and troubleshooting of this service. However, because operators have many servers in the country and each province has its own billing system, it is very difficult to check and verify the deficiencies one by one.
