Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!vector!telecom-gateway From: well!fgk@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Frank G Kienast) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Dangers of Wrong Numbers Message-ID: Date: 12 Feb 89 01:10:29 GMT Sender: news@vector.UUCP Lines: 26 Approved: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-Submissions-To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 57, message 2 of 7 >One thing I didn't see posted was what happens when someone calls a BBS and >say "Hey, man, great new board at 123-4567. Call it now!" and mistypes a >few digits in the process. Whoever lives at the wrong number gets a >mountain of modem calls, usually at 3 AM or whenever the BBS junkies are >awake. A similar problem exists with machines that are programmed to automatically redial a number until data has been successfully sent. A few months ago, I was testing a fax setup at home. Compuserve offers a service which lets you send a mail message via fax by specifying the area code and number of the destination fax machine, so I decided to use this to test my setup. I found serious hardware problems with my setup which I would not be able to fix that day. I had no way, though, of stopping the retry calls. In the next few hours, I answered the phone several times only to hear a fax machine at the other end. Obviously, this same problem would also occur when someone mistyped the number of a fax machine they wished to send to. I think automatic retry should only be activated if the called number is busy, and not if there is voice or even no answer. This should not be all that difficult - even modems can tell the difference between busy, no answer, voice, etc. In real life: Frank Kienast Well: well!fgk@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU CIS: 73327,3073 V-mail: 804-980-3733