Phone relay services

[LADave]

Phone relay services allow deaf/hard-of-hearing folks to make phone calls through a special operator who basically text chats with the deaf caller and talks to the hearing caller. Traditionally this has been done with a TTY terminal with a one line display and usually a printer that uses a thermal tape about 2" wide.

Now Internet services are coming into vogue. Much nicer display, keyboard and display that way.

Unfortunately fraudsters are using these relay services. Pretending to be deaf or hiding the fact that they speak with strong accents from the person they're trying to defraud. So there's a requirement that people signing up to use these services have a traceable IP address.

I'm trying to switch from a TTY to this Internet method (i711.com or IP-relay.com) and I'm getting error messages when I try to call out. According to tech support at i711.com the error message suggests that I'm behind a proxy server, which essentially makes me anonymous and untraceable, therefore unacceptable to the software.

I contacted my ISP Times Warner Cable about this. The rep I talked to denied that they use proxy servers (although there is independent information that they do use them to cache webpages, and so they can redirect unresolveable URLs to a page of alternate suggestions that is driven by paid advertising). Instead TWC's tech rep suggests the problem is that I'm accessing the Internet through a router with NAT; that this anonymizes me and triggers the error message.

Has any one else on this forum dealt with this before? Were they able to resolve it? I don't think I should need to reconfigure my router each time I want to make a phone call.

[wimiadmin]

I doubt it's your router causing the issue. You can always temporarily eliminate the router and connect your internet directly to your computer and make a test call.

As for TWC, I'm fairly certain that redirecting an unresolvable URL would be handled by DNS and not a proxy. We have proxy detection on our home page. We don't detect EVERY proxy, but we do detect a ton of them. If you go to our home page and you don't see "Possible Proxy Detected" under your IP address...chances are, you're not going through a proxy.

I noticed at both sites, i711.com and ip-relay.com they both have a "Powered by Purple" logo under their own. Their parent company appears to be purple.us in case you need to escalate any tech support issues.

I'd call i711.com again and give them the IP that shows on our page and see if they can trace it....if they can then it's not your IP it's something else.