Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!decuac!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: zygot!john@apple.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Caller ID Linked to Decline in Harrassing Calls Message-ID: Date: 22 Aug 89 03:34:59 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 60 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us In article , mhw@wittsend.lbp.harris. com (Michael H. Warfield (Mike)) writes: > The best thing I found for dealing with late night crank calls is > a modem. After the first crank call in the middle of the night, I turn > the modem on with auto answer. <<>> It rarely > takes more than a call or two for the callers to realize that they can't > frustrate a machine and their ears aren't worth it. I recommended this to > a college student friend a few years back and she also dealt with a serious > crank call problem very effectively! Problem with it is that you can > only use it when you don't want or expect any calls. I've never gotten > any innocent victims yet but there is that catch. This brings up a heretofore unmentioned type of harrassment call: the idiot with the wrong number. These may have been pranks, but they sounded legitimate. On the first instance someone called on my private line and asked for a Tom [Somebody]. I simply said, "you must have the wrong number", and hung up. Minutes later, he calls back and upon realizing that he had reached the same party asked if he had reached 723-XXXX. I told him that he had and that he must have obtained the wrong number somewhere. A few minutes after that, a woman called asking for the same person. Once again, I explained that she had a wrong number--at which point the previous gentleman, who was on the line, spoke up and said, "See, I told you, honey." I thought that was that. Ten minutes later, an operator called and said, "This is the Pacific Bell operator. Have I reached 723-XXXX?" "Yes" "Is there a Tom [Somebody] there?" "No, and there never has been". "Thank-you." That was scenario #1. The second scenario begins simply with a telco repairman showing up at the door. He says, "Pacific Bell repair. You have a line...723-yyyy out of order?" "Not that I'm aware of." "A Mister [Neverheardoftheperson] reported your line out of order." Well, it turns out that 723-yyyy in this case has a Telebit Trailblazer connected to it. For those of you who don't know, it answers with the most gawdawful "bleep-blop-whoosh", repeated once then followed by standard modem tones. Some idiot was so sure he had a right number that he actually called repair service and "turned it in". Even more surprising was that they dispatched without calling on one of my voice lines first. -- John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.uucp | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! [Moderator's Note: Don't you love the people who pull those stunts? I once had a lady do that to my modem line, but the repair foreman called me from his office on my other line to inquire, "Pat, don't you have a modem on the second line?" I told him I did, and he related that some lady had put *seven quarters in a row* in a payphone someplace; kept calling my number and getting the modem; got two different operators to assist her because she did not believe the first operator, and finally -- bless her soul -- when she got home she called Repair Service to turn me in for having "...some kind of terrible, loud noise on the line...". And she even asked Repair if they would *refund the buck seventy five she lost* trying to get through. Talk about Dumb! Although I am sure she meant well by calling it in. PT]