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Communications

Strange Numbers on Caller ID? 113

Posted by Cliff from the forewarned-is-forearmed dept.
boohiss asks: "I've been getting a lot of calls on my cell phone from '+001819'. I haven't answered them, of course. But what is this number? I've found some various explanations here and there, but nothing conclusive. There's also the story on Snopes about the famed 809 long distance scam, which may or may not be what this is. Could it be some form of cell phone spam that isn't compatible with my phone? Does anyone else get these calls, and has anyone figured out what they are?" If anyone is unfortunate enough to fall for one of these, what options do they have in terms of damage control?
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Strange Numbers on Caller ID? More

Strange Numbers on Caller ID?

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  • It might be... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skermit ( 451840 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @06:38PM (#11760293) Homepage
    Office pboxes. I just got a call from my aunt who called form 973-000-0001 (973 is a New Jersey area code). If they have their caller ID tags screwed up, or even spoofed, it'll show up that way. Here's a service which does it for a fee... http://www.covertcall.com/ [covertcall.com]
    • Good point -- When I get calls from the office it (1) doesn't show an area code (*all* other calls do) and (2) has the wrong first 3 digits (that's called the exchange, I think). They use a VOIP system of some sort, but I'm not sure of any details.
    • The statment "I haven't answered them, of course." becomes instantly funny when you read a simple explanation like this...
  • I get calls from 0-000-000-0000, how is that possible?

  • For the Intel Developer's Forum... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...I get calls from 415-000-0000. Strangely, every time I try to call them back, I can't get through.

  • Why don't you just answer? (Score:5, Funny)

    by semaj ( 172655 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @06:52PM (#11760461) Journal
    ... and ask them?

    Or you could of course ask 100,000 other people who have no real idea what you're talking about, of course.

  • Could also be long distance calling card or VoIP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aoteoroa ( 596031 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @06:55PM (#11760501)
    Anecdotal evidence:
    A friend sometimes calls my cell from Korea using a long distance calling card and the number displayed on my Caller Id is very similar to the one you posted.

    Just a guessing:
    Strange caller id numbers also originate from a poorly configured (or intentionally screwed up) Voice Over IP phone.

    • Yup.

      I work for a telecom company (if you know which one, you also know I don't speak for them) and when I'm abroad roaming and someone calls me from home, I sometimes get these types of numbers.

      Basically it means they're not passing a proper caller ID, but also not telling the destination network that the number is not for display.

      I suspect it's a network identifier, for accounting purposes within the telco. All it means is that whoever is calling is calling from overseas... That's not to say it's not a

  • VoIP (Score:1)

    by kponto ( 821962 )
    When you use Skypeout [skypeout.com], the number shows up as wacky. It could just be VoIP calls coming in.

  • It is the international prefix (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ZenJabba1 ( 472792 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @07:05PM (#11760586) Homepage Journal
    Basically your cell phone provider isn't stripping the right digits from the number being presented to it, and as such the number being presented to your phone is strange...

    All that number means is

    + (international dial)
    00 (in some countries this is also international)
    819 (area code) ...

    I saw this same problem when traveling through the midwest a few months ago.

  • Government Offices? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Student_Tech ( 66719 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @07:05PM (#11760590) Journal
    When my sister was working at the district attorney office, if she called out house from there, the caller ID showed up as "out of area", but if she called our cell phones it showed up as ( I think ) 0393.

    Always the same number, so we knew who it was, but it was odd.
    Perhaps your carrier isn't receiving the caller ID info, and your carrier is just sticking some number on there to indicate that.
    • Where I work we've got an Asterisk based phone system. For some reason we haven't managed to figure out, the caller id on outbound calls shows up simply as the 4 digit extension of the phone making the call.

      It causes problems sometimes, as some companies we deal with (I think mainly airlines) route your call differently depending on the caller id. When they can't figure out what to do with it, the phone just keeps ringing until you hang up.
    • if she called out house from there

      You've got a phone in your outhouse? You got one a them 'lectric fans what let the bad smells out too, city boy?
  • seriously, if it's a person you want to talk to they will leave a message, otherwise they won't. End of story.

  • just answer it (Score:1, Funny)

    by frn123 ( 242374 )
    Why don't you just pick up the phone and ask wtf they are and what they want. Answering won't hurt you any way so whats the deal?

    • Re:just answer it (Score:3, Informative)

      by david.given ( 6740 )
      Why don't you just pick up the phone and ask wtf they are and what they want. Answering won't hurt you any way so whats the deal?

      The caller's probably from the US, where they have this bizarre system were the recipient of a mobile phone call pays.

      + in a phone number usually indicates an international number (you're supposed to dial your international call prefix plus the number, you see) but there are no country codes beginning with 0. Assuming that, again, he's in the US and the + is in fact erroneous,

      • For the millionth time, we don't pay for the call in the US. We pay for airtime. Incoming calls cost the same to the originating party as a call to a landline phone in the same area.

        The system is set up this way because there is no charge for a local landline call (unless you have the cheapest phone service available, and then it is still a flat rate). Our system is not set up to charge the originating party anything but long distance charges.
      • What's this bizzare system you're talking about? When I call someone from my cell phone, they don't get charged for it. The only explanation for your theory that I can think of is the idea that if you call a cell phone, the cell phone owner (in this case the call recipient) gets charged, but the rate is the same for calls from next door and calls from the other side of the world.
      • Recipent?

        If I call somebodies cell from my cell phone, unless we have a deal, we both get charged for the time used on the network. That's how it works over here.
      • he caller's probably from the US, where they have this bizarre system were the recipient of a mobile phone call pays.

        As opposed the Europe where they have the bizarre system where it costs more to call someones cell phone than it does their landline. :)
      • The caller's probably from the US, where they have this bizarre system were the recipient of a mobile phone call pays.

        Which is almost as weird as having to pay for internet access by the minute or by the byte...

  • I got a few calls over a couple of days a few weeks ago, with no caller ID info. I answered them because I'm not a tin-foil-hat-wearer, and they invariably would hang up after a few seconds. It was a bit odd.
    • That was me. Forgive me.

    • Re:Similar thing... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Trepalium ( 109107 )
      Telemarketers? They seem to be allowed to use predictive dialers so long as they answer within a few seconds, otherwise they must terminate the call.
      • Some of the more annoying telemarketers used to do that on purpose. They would setup one dialer to search for "live" numbers, which would be passed on to a second system that made the actual telemarketing calls. You could usually tell this was happening when you got a hangup call, and five minutes later, some sleazy telemarketer was on the line.

  • It could be a company with an entire exchange. One time a guy from Earthlink called me back (I was rearranging phone cords to fix DSL interference, so I had to hang up) and it only showed six digits of the phone number, i.e. the area code and exchange. Either he used a "generic" outside line and they don't want people calling them back, or they don't give out extensions by policy. (I actually know that for a fact--if you were talking to someone, they're not allowed to forward your call back to them witho

  • Not a scam... Just a shoddy carrier. (Score:5, Informative)

    by jaredcat ( 223478 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @07:37PM (#11760860)
    What you are experiencing is someone calling you through a carrier that does not properly populate the CLI and ANI fields in the SS7 (or ISDN) message to the terminating carrier.

    This isn't anything scamy at all, and nothing for you to worry about. All this means is that someone is using some cheap ass long distance to call you... maybe from a prepaid phone card or a VoIP-to-POTS service. Its very easy to not set this up correctly if you are using some crap switching platform like NACT STX, and if the carrier is small enough to be under the radar, they probably aren't filing the PIU forms anyway so they don't give a shit about the tax penalities for not sending ANI.

    Your cell phone provider will treat this call the same way it treats all incoming calls. Most likely that means it will just charge you at your normal airtime rate.

    • Could be someone spoofing ANI [google.com] from a land line as well. It's trivial to spoof with the right soft/hardware. I guess I read too much 2600 [2600.com]...

      • Re:Not a scam... Just a shoddy carrier. (Score:5, Informative)

        by jaredcat ( 223478 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @08:32PM (#11761270)
        Spoofing ANI and CLI only requires that you have an oob signaling link to your upstream carrier. Every upstream carrier is going to populate whatever the one before them had in the message for ANI and CLI. You can probably do that with any old ISDN or T1 without much trouble.

        If you just have a regular DS0 land line, its a bit different. ANI and CLI are transmitted out of band, so you can't reall effect that. The terminating switch will have the same ANI and CLI that your originating switch trasmitted in the SS7 message. However, the "caller id" information (taken from the CLI field) is transmitted in band from the terminating switch to the receiving party's handset... and this is very easy to spoof. Once you are connected, you can send your own in band "caller id" signal which will be picked up by the receiving part's handset. You can probably do it with sound card.

        • Re:Not a scam... Just a shoddy carrier. (Score:5, Funny)

          by MalachiConstant ( 553800 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @12:24AM (#11762855)
          If you just have a blah-blah land line, its a bit different. BLAH and BLAH are transmitted blah-blah, so you can't really effect that. The blah-blah will have the same BLAH and BLAH that your blah-blah trasmitted in the blah-blah.

          Thank you for helping me understand what I sound like when I try to explain a RAID setup to my uncle.

          :)

          • Re:Not a scam... Just a shoddy carrier. (Score:5, Informative)

            by photon317 ( 208409 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @01:03AM (#11763279)

            In-band = information transmitted the same way your data (or voice in this case) is. In an analog phone network, in-band signalling and control is done with things like audible tones and voltage changes.

            Out-of-band = signalling and control that happens by some other means outside your data (voice) link. For instance with an ISDN line, the out-of-band signalling is on the D channel, whereas the voice/data are on the B channels.

            CLI/ANI info, posted from the first hit of a google search:

            CLI , ANI

            Calling Line Identification , Automatic Number Identification

            CLI = ANI :
            A service available on digital phone networks that tells the person being called which number is calling them.
            The central office equipment identifies the phone number of the caller, enabling information about the caller to be sent along with the call itself. (Osicom)
            The providing of the Directory Number from which a terminating call has originated ( NI )
            A service available on digital phone networks that tells the person being called which number is calling them.
            The central office equipment identifies the phone number of the caller, enabling information about the caller to be sent along with the call itself. ( WorldCom )
            At a minimum, the calling line identification includes a single calling party number; it may also include a second calling party number, a calling party subaddress, and redirecting number information.
            Calling line identification may not include any calling party number due to interworking, or because of an interaction with the CLIR supplementary service. ( TG )
    • Your cell phone provider will treat this call the same way it treats all incoming calls. Most likely that means it will just charge you at your normal airtime rate.
      Huh? Do you get charged for incoming calls in the US?
      • Of course, at least on cell phones. For example, my cell phone contract gives me 500 minutes of airtime (during the day.) Any phone call, whether I originate or receive, deducts minutes from my balance. This is the airtime charge he's talking about.

        How else would you expect it work?

        • In many places in Europe, at least, it's the caller who pays for the call (unless it's a toll-free call, of course.) Why should two people pay for one call?

          How else would you expect it to work?
          • In the US, companies look for new and innovative ways to double bill their customers. Phone companies and television providers are on the forefront of this new way of doing business. This is to increase profits while mitigating the impact of running out of ideas for good products.
          • If I call a cellphone, it costs the same as if I call a land line phone (costs nothing for a local call). So only one person pays for the call: the receiver.

            When both caller and receiver are cellphones and they are both on the same network, normally nobody pays.

          • The idea is that the landline caller pays for the landline part of the call and the wireless subscriber pays for the wireless part of the call, so the two parties are not being charged twice, they are each paying for a part of the call.

            The reason for this is mostly historical. When mobile phones were added to the telephone network, they were given normal telephone numbers. Instead of that number being terminated at a regular telephone, it was routed to a mobile phone base station, where a mobile radio ope

        • Of course, free nights and weekends.. don't forget those.

          I do like the British/Euro system where the caller pays, but where are my free nights and weekends? /should prob. stop complaining considering I have a "pay as you go" plan
      • Yes. Cellular works a bit differently in the US. You are charged for both incoming and outcoming calls.

        On the other hand, the calling party does -NOT- pay more for calling a cellular than a landline. In most other countries, cellular has a special city code that is billed at a higher rate. Here in the US you can port any number to cell or landline, so its not usually possible for the calling party to know he is calling a cell.

        • Note, that before LNP, there were quite a few exchanges which were typically cellular-only.

          In my area code (561), the 632, 512, and 236 exchanges were all purely cell phones, and there were several others I can't remember offhand.

          Now it's a little murkier, but even still, *most* numbers in those exchanges are cellular phones.
          • This is true for the most part, but it can't be relied upon for billing purposes. Every NPANXX is associated with an OCN, but the OCN no longer owns the number. The biggest problem here is not cellular, which as the parent said is usually all together in one area code. What is much merkier is trying to identify if you are calling a number attached to a RBOC or a CLEC. Its very common now to change your local service provider for your landline. LNP for cellular is a new development.

            Back in the old days
    • Along those lines... I have a friend who buys cheap-ass calling cards from who-knows-where, that show up on my caller id as `999-999-9999'.

    • Re:Not a scam... Just a shoddy carrier. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I would agree with the subject line; I'm with Rogers in Canada and when I use their web based text messaging system to send a message to my wife's cell phone, also on Rogers, it shows up as a + 'number' and not an actual number I can return a call to.

      I should mention a few things about Rogers, you get 2500 incoming text messages a month, but have to pay to send one from your cell. They farmed out their web based system for sending text messages to ZimSMS.com probably because they didn't want to deal with

  • Answer your damn phone already... (Score:3, Funny)

    by eraserewind ( 446891 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @07:37PM (#11760868)
    I've been watching you, Ne^H^H Boohiss, and I want to meet you. I don't know if you're ready to see what I want to show you, but unfortunately, we have run out of time. They're coming for you, Boohiss. And I'm not sure what they're going to do.

  • What an odd coincidence... (Score:3)

    by joranbelar ( 567325 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @07:41PM (#11760892)
    I was walking down the street today and I happened across a shop downtown. The sign above the door read "XjfdiIXo-8", of all things! I, of course, didn't bother taking a look or poking my head inside to see what exactly it was all about. So, which of you 100,000 strangers can tell me what it was?

    </snark>

  • It might be... (Score:4, Informative)

    by sboyle ( 139324 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @07:41PM (#11760900)

    According to http://decoder.americom.com/cgi-bin/decoder.cgi [americom.com] it might be:

    Gatineau, Sherbrooke, Hull, Drummondville, Trois-Rivières, Victoriaville, Aylmer, Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Rouyn-Noranda and Trois-Rivières-Ouest;

    Quebec, Canada

  • PRI (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have a PRI (23 voice channels) with a national carrier and manage our phone system. I can set my CLI (caller id) to anything I want like 5551212 . I _cannot_ set my ANI (the real billable phone number) though. You cannot see ANI on your phone unless you have a very special agreement with the phone carrier (e.g. 800 numbers)

  • Probable Scam. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @07:55PM (#11761011)
    Did you see this one? [ripoffreport.com]

    Breaking down the number,
    + = Standard phone number convention outside the US
    00 = International Dialing
    1 = North America / Caribbean
    819 = Quebec City, Quebec

    Unless you know someone in Quebec, I'd recommend you not answer it. Even if they can't rip you off, why let them waste your time and your air time?

    Finally, you do realize that even this number may be a complete fake. Thanks to VoIP you can now setup your own inexpensive PBX and manipulate the caller id numbers as you see fit. There are even companies popping up, like this one [star38.com], that offer faked caller id as a service.

  • Flames! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by boohiss ( 804985 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @08:08PM (#11761076) Homepage

    Anyone who posted an answer, thanks. I've never seen a number like that on my cell before, and I was just curious.

    As far as answering goes, why should I waste minutes or risk a scam? Why even post a reply like that? A wise man once told me the only stupid question is the one not asked. And apparently the slashdot mods though it worthy of a green light, so plllbbttt

  • When my friend calls my Verizon cell phone from France using Skype I get 000-123-4567[89] as the caller ID on my cell...other than that it's the only way I can tell it's him

    I typically get 000-000-0000 on my cell once a month or so, answering the call makes a really cool 'beep' sound so either I'm being tracked by forces unknown or Sirius Cybernetics works for Verizon.
  • That looks similar to the From address when Cingular spams their customer via text message.
  • When my best friend from high school calls me from Morocco (she's in the peace corps), it shows up as only half the phone # with a + next to it, looks a lot like that.

  • same wierd thing (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been getting calls that traceback to 825 area code .... too bad there isn't one.

  • another possibility (Score:2, Informative)

    by tgl ( 462237 )
    Don't ignore the possibility that it's your own equipment malfunctioning. I was getting the weirdest junk on caller ID a couple months ago, until I figured out that the batteries in my caller ID display had died...
  • That was me calling you with my new VOIP. Just pick up the bloody phone next time I call.
  • That's the number they call from to implant a bug in your brain!
  • I haven't answered them, of course.

    Of course. This is very smart of you. If you had gotten the notion to pick up the phone and, well, ask who they are, control of your brain would have automatically been siezed by the worldwide deadly Communist Gangster Frankenstein Computer God, [pacifier.com] who controls all of the brain-bank-brains on the far side of the moon that we never see.

    Consider yourself lucky.

  • If you don't know who is calling you, don't answere the phone. If it is important or someone you know, they will leave a message and you can correlate the numbers to the person. This is the best thing to use on a Cell and what I do on my land line.

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