phantom phone calls

What's up with all of these calls I get that show up as "out of area" on my caller ID and there's nobody on the other end of the call? My first thought is that it's some marketing company doing research on when people are home or not.

There are a lot of marketers, esp. credit card companies, who try to get around the do not call registries by calling this way. One of two methods -- call so that it leaves an 800 number that you can call back and then they pitch a special offer, and the other is to call with it blocked, but when you do answer they say that they are checking on your account, so it's quasi-legit. But of course then they make the pitch while they just happen to have you on the line.

Either that, or my favorite, the "we've haven't got your payment, yet" calls that mysteriously cease after you start sending the payment in with a "return receipt requested" from USPS. Costs a wee bit more but miraculously stops the calls and late fees. Of course, no company would try to get substantial late fees from even a small percentage of tens of thousands of customers by this means, would they?

We used to send in payments waaaayyyy eearly and still have then try to get late fees until we did this. And still, one firm tried to tell us they didn't have any method of dealing with the return receipt. That was until I asked if they really didn't have anyone there who knew how to sign their name.

Friendly service, indeed.

Tyler, I'm on the national "Do not call" list, so it is extremely rare that I receive an "old-fashioned" (meaning made by a living, breathing person) telemarketing call, anymore. What I do get are 4 pre-recorded messages over and over again, which are always left on my answering machine. I've noticed that when "out of area" shows up on my caller ID (and I answer), I get the same phantom calls. I think that it is the telemarketing firms software trying to identify an answering machine. If they get me instead of my machine, there is no message.

chmsam, I have not had a late fee since I started paying my credit card bills on-line. They always give you a reference number, and the "your payment has been made/scheduled" page has a date on it. It's great. It would be hard for them to argue with back-up info. like that. Hope this helps.

bellsouth privacy director......

best $2/month you'll spend

stops them cold

www.donotcall.gov

Even has a place to report those numbers that still call. They are supposed to be fined. Signup the cell phone too.

We pay for caller ID and still get "Out of Area" calls. What a racket.

I saw it on tha MTV....

Fin

One old trick that frequently works with answering machines is to start your outgoing message recording with those three tones you get when you call a number that is disconnected or otherwise no longer in service.

There are several other possibilities.

1) Hackers sometimes "war dial" looking for computer modems that they can access. If you answer they just hang up. If a modem answers it's logged for later hacking.

2) Telemarketers often use "predictive dialers" that call numbers before they have a huckster avalaible to talk to you. This lets them maximize their resources. If no one is available, you get a dead line.

Sometimes the predictive dialers are broken and can't add on the huckster.

There was a third possibility, but I forgot.

Oh! Yeah. Some of them do an automated check for a human answering, then have a sales droid call a few minutes later.

Daniel

I agree with option 2 above, what happened is that you were dialed and a callers was not able to talk to you at that time and instead of playing a please hold message, you heard nothing. I get calls where ther eis nothing fo ra few seconds then someone comes on asking for my full name or Mrs Cobb. There aint no Mrs Cobb here.

I do not have caller id for that vary reason. Folks have it and most telemarkerters or hang ups are out of area.

Even if you join the DNC list, they can still war dial and existing businesses can abuse your number, sell it, etc.

[ QUOTE ]
Fat_Tony said:
Tyler, I'm on the national "Do not call" list, so it is.....

[/ QUOTE ]

Can you explain what that is? it sounds interesting.

I have call screening with Qwest. If a call comes through that won't register on caller ID, the caller receives a message that I don't accept such calls, and they'll have to unblock or punch their number into the phone in order to complete the call. I haven't seen an "out of area" message in a long long time.

Most modern telemarketing devices will listen to the cadence of an answered call to decide whether it's reached a human being ("Hello?" followed by silence) or an answering machine ("babble-babble-after-da-tone"). If they detect a live person at the other end, they'll patch the call through to a live agent (which may take several seconds while hearing silence).

The TeleZapper works by playing those special tones, called Special Information Tones or SIT tones for short. These tones tell the telemarketing device that the number's been disconnected and pulls it out of it's database. If you record those SIT tones (three ascending beeps) at the beginning of an outgoing answering machine greeting, you'll trap out those telemarketing machines.

You can find the SIT tones here (along with some neat history) or here...

I just got another one of these phantom calls today. The caller ID did show a number. I called it back from my office phone, and it was answered by a voicemail system. I didn't leave a message.

You can do a reverse lookup on the number using Google. They've quietly launched this capability last year. Just enter the 10-digit number into the search bar with dashes,
i.e. xxx-xxx-xxxx

www.switchboard.com also has the feature to do a reverse lookup
Jeff

[ QUOTE ]
WildRice said:
www.switchboard.com also has the feature to do a reverse lookup
Jeff

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks, Jeff. Infospace.com has it also.

The number itself wasn't found by either of these, but the exchange appears to be in a residential section of Phoenix. FWIW, I waited for a while to see if it was a predictive dialer and nobody every showed up. I rarely get telemarketing calls even though I'm not on the do-not-call list (careful application of rules from junkbusters does wonders), but I've been getting these phantom calls with increasing frequency.

BTW, regarding privacay director... The FTC added a rule last year that telemarketers must not block callerID information... doesn't this defeat the privacy director technique?

Of course, 99% of the telemarketing calls I do get are from firms that are obviously breaking the law (blocking caller ID, using recorded messages, etc) so the DNC list isn't going to help me much and privacy director is probably the way to go. The market outperforms regulation yet again.

[ QUOTE ]
gadget_lover said:
1) Hackers sometimes "war dial" looking for computer modems that they can access. If you answer they just hang up. If a modem answers it's logged for later hacking.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wardialing went out of style 10 years ago. I don't doubt that it's still done, but with VPNs and intranets, it's by and large a waste of time since the number of modems attached to something interesting (RADIUS servers barely count) is steadily declining.

Wardriving (looking for unsecured wireless networks, usually while cruising around in a car), on the other hand, is a popular "hobby" for those that want free internet access or wish to engage in low-risk corporate espionage.

[ QUOTE ]
gadget_lover said:
2) Telemarketers often use "predictive dialers" that call numbers before they have a huckster avalaible to talk to you. This lets them maximize their resources. If no one is available, you get a dead line.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is indeed the case. No profitable telemarketing company has agents making direct calls. The "predictive dialer" is coupled to a statistical database and real-time anaylysis of agent call times that hooks up agents with live customers in real time. Of course, sometimes they stumble a bit and you get the ubiquitous please hold for an important message... or stumble badly and noone answers within that ~5 seconds that the average person is going to stand there confused.

Of course, the direct-marketing industry is such a stand-up group that sells products of unquestionable integrity - surely they wouldn't skirt regulations that impede their ability to inform and educate you about products that you obviously need?

Alas, Wardialing is alive and well. You don't see it as much anymore because it's more fun to hack over the internet, but there are targets you don't see on the net.

Current targets are PBX control systems and other systems with remote dial in for maintenance purposes. Phreakers like to hack the PBX to forward their calls for free. Radius servers are sometimes an easy target for guessing account passwords.

Wardriving is fun, and it's not illegal (yet). If you try to hack a server attached to a wireless net, you are probably taking a big risk. There is no such thing as low-risk corporate espionage via computer. Well, not in California. If the IDS is actually being watched, and if the security group is on it's toes, it's not hard to use a directional antenna to find your 802.11 radio sources.

BTW, I am not a hacker, I don't hack computers or phones. I don't advocate any illegal activity and frown on unethical activities too. I was once a Phone Company guy and was once a data security guy.

Daniel

For the past 3 days someone has been calling my fax line atleast 20 times per day starts around 3 pm and ends at 5 pm I thought after awhile they'd get the drift that nobody answers that line but they kept calling and calling so I finally answered it and it was some old degranged lady that sounded waaay too happy and was in disbelief when I wasn't some guy called frederick

I forgot about the ease of hacking the average PBX for months of free long distance, and I guess you could net a slew of dialup accounts if you compromised a RADIUS server.

All too many PBXs have a modem hooked up to a dedicated line that can be configured to pick up voice calls... easy to erase whatever caller ID the PBX has once you've compromised that link anyway.

Other than that... there aren't as many dial-in connections to companies these days. Corporate BBSs had some interesting stuff for the taking back in the day or some poorly-secured telnet (telnet via telephone - amazing) dialins.

Wardriving is low-risk enough if you play the game after hours, don't linger too long, don't leave any obvious 'fingerprints,' and do your snooping on a "clean" workstation just in case they're fingering you at the same time. I wouldn't try to break into a large company with a decent IT staff, but there are scads of smaller companies with utterly defenseless wireless networks (minimal IT staff just able to maintain - nevermind secure - the network) ripe for plunder or simply as a transit point for your questionable online activities.