Daily calls limit

Each account has a cap on the total amount of spending allowed per day for calls and call forwarding. This limit is there to protect you and us.

Here is what you need to know:

• Default limitation
  The default limitation is $25 per day for all your calls (company wide). This applies both to calls you make and calls you forward. You find your current limit on the Usage page in the web app, under the menu option (three dots), in the upper right section of the view.
• Automatic increased level
  The system will automatically increase the daily limit gradually over time, to ensure that you have plenty of safety margins to handle normal variations in traffic volume.
• Manual change
  If you need to increase the limit quickly, you can contact us.
• 80% warning
  If you reach 80% of your daily limit, we will automatically send you an email notification, warning you about the risk.
• If you reach your limit
  If you reach your daily limit, the system will pause your account temporarily for safety reasons. Contact us if this happens

Why do we have this limitation?

The limitations are there for your and our protection.

Criminals want to make calls at your cost

Criminals that gain access to an account that can be used to make calls, can use automatic scripts to start thousands of calls to high cost destinations, where they get kick-back on the call charges generated – from the local phone company in the country called.

This is called International Premium rate.

Historically, there are numerous cases where companies have had their phone systems hacked, after which they receive phone bills for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

How can criminals make calls at your cost?

We have never had any Sonetel user account hacked, but there have been instances where users have made mistakes that have made it possible for hackers to make calls at their cost.

• Same password and email with different services
  Many use the same email and password for many Internet services. If one of those other services gets hacked, hackers can try the same email and password found there on thousands of other services to see if it works there as well. It can be done at scale – fully automated. Hacked credentials are up for sale in the Dark web. You can check if your credentials have been compromised at any other service here.
• Exposed SIP phones
  Some customers that use 3rd party SIP phones to connect to the Sonetel service, have placed those SIP-phones outside a Firewall. This is a very bad idea. These 3rd party SIP devices come with their own security issues, meaning that hackers can find them and access them, and make calls with them, without the need to even have access to the Sonetel credentials.
• Unsafe storage of credentials
  Customers that store their Sonetel credentials in unsafe places, may allow others access to them, which can open up for abuse.

With Sonetel – you are safe

Thanks to the limitations we have implemented – in terms of daily call limits – you are protected against large costs.

How does this protect Sonetel?

Criminals commonly try to create Sonetel accounts with fake identities and use stolen credit cards to fill their prepaid account in order to make large volumes of calls to International premium rate destinations.

Thanks to the daily spending limit per account (and other security functions that we keep secret) – we can make sure that it isn’t worth the while for criminals to do this with our service.