I just got a phone call...

Originally posted by Cynic
I received two calls yesterday at exactly the same time on my cell and home numbers. I didn't answer but the call display read :+1-999-999-9999. I googled it to no avail. Creepy!

Why is that creepy?

I somehow do not think people here will want to hear how things like that happen and would rather assume it's something bad.

We used to get a lot of calls like this...

When we moved to a new town & took over a number that had been owned by some deadbeat who had debts everywhere. Even worse, the phone company was slow to update their caller ID, so I called a local company back and said, "look, we are new here, this isn't us" and the guy freaked out, yelling "you're a big liar! Your caller ID says who you are!!"

The clicking & hang-up is a machine calling to see if you're home before a real person wastes time calling your house.

And the caller ID you're seeing is SPOOFED. This is easy to do. The only point of it is to keep you from knowing who was calling you, so you wouldn't screen the call.

Case solved.

Yep i had a few calls from the dc area all doing the same thing, then i got two calls from the Smithsonian Institute also.

Originally posted by ZeroReady
The number was 202-033-7865. Washington DC area code. When I answered I heard an unusual click sound then static then it disconnected. I tried calling back and it said the number was no longer in service.

Googled the number and only a few pages came up, odd since normally telemarketer numbers have lots of search results on google. The top page in the results whocallsme.com... has one person who reported getting a call from this number 2.5 hours before I did.

I had a long phone conversation with an old friend of mine yesterday and we were talking about all kinds of conspiracy stuff, like we usually do. I'm sure we dropped plenty of flag words.

I'm not saying the NSA is calling me, but this call made me a little uncomfortable.

Anyone else ever get a weird call from DC?

edit on 14-3-2013 by ZeroReady because: typo

I reprogrammed and rerouted entire telephone exchanges once upon a time, tens of thousands of lines.

Sometimes this is just random dialing by exchange staff or engineers.

Between you and me, sometimes, just sometimes an engineer would hook onto your line pair somewhere along the line from the switching system to your home with a test tele, and make long distance calls somewhere...i'd check your bill carefully if i were you...any expensive calls matches to Alaska or Nigeria or somewhere from the time of your weird call, and Bob's your uncle.

cool

I worked as an international/long distance operator years ago and 033 could NOT be a prefix for an American phone number. It doesn't work like that. 202 is for California and DC areas but 033 would not be a starting prefix for a phone number anywhere in the US. Think about it for a minute. If you live in the area and aren't required to dial the area code the first number you would dial is 0 and that would automatically take you to an operator so no this is NOT a cell phone in the US nor is it a land line in the US.

It could be an international number, 20 is Egypt and they dont' always come up on your phone the way they should. I have had calls from people in other countries and it sometimes look like a phone number from the states and other times it is a long drawn out number.

The other possibility it could be is an auto dialer number for a telemarketer, they had odd numbers and are ones you can't call back.

Hey mods!

Could we get a new forum started for wrong numbers and hang-ups?

I get them all the time as well.

Originally posted by MysterX

Originally posted by ZeroReady
The number was 202-033-7865. Washington DC area code. When I answered I heard an unusual click sound then static then it disconnected. I tried calling back and it said the number was no longer in service.

Googled the number and only a few pages came up, odd since normally telemarketer numbers have lots of search results on google. The top page in the results whocallsme.com... has one person who reported getting a call from this number 2.5 hours before I did.

I had a long phone conversation with an old friend of mine yesterday and we were talking about all kinds of conspiracy stuff, like we usually do. I'm sure we dropped plenty of flag words.

I'm not saying the NSA is calling me, but this call made me a little uncomfortable.

Anyone else ever get a weird call from DC?

edit on 14-3-2013 by ZeroReady because: typo

I reprogrammed and rerouted entire telephone exchanges once upon a time, tens of thousands of lines.

Sometimes this is just random dialing by exchange staff or engineers.

Between you and me, sometimes, just sometimes an engineer would hook onto your line pair somewhere along the line from the switching system to your home with a test tele, and make long distance calls somewhere...i'd check your bill carefully if i were you...any expensive calls matches to Alaska or Nigeria or somewhere from the time of your weird call, and Bob's your uncle.

Awesome! I still work on an SL100 (basically customer facing DMS100)..TDM ftw! Even though everything I do now is SIP I still have my BUTT set (and the old red\blue\beige boxes I made!) with my tools.

Originally posted by ZeroReady
The number was 202-033-7865. Washington DC area code. When I answered I heard an unusual click sound then static then it disconnected. I tried calling back and it said the number was no longer in service.

Automatic dialing machine.

It's either a debt collector or a telemarketer.

The machine is set to dial but sometimes no one is there to speak to you because the operators are out so the machine hangs up. Trying to call back won't get you through, either.

I've had this happen before and one time the number appeared on my caller ID and I picked it up but this time there was an operator. She explained the situation with the machine doing that some times by accident.

I wouldn't worry.

- Lee

my girlfreind called the number & this is what happened to her

Originally posted by lee anoma

Originally posted by ZeroReady
The number was 202-033-7865. Washington DC area code. When I answered I heard an unusual click sound then static then it disconnected. I tried calling back and it said the number was no longer in service.

Automatic dialing machine.

It's either a debt collector or a telemarketer.

The machine is set to dial but sometimes no one is there to speak to you because the operators are out so the machine hangs up. Trying to call back won't get you through, either.

I've had this happen before and one time the number appeared on my caller ID and I picked it up but this time there was an operator. She explained the situation with the machine doing that some times by accident.

I wouldn't worry.

- Lee

Pretty much what I have been saying since this thread started.

I worked as a telecom engineer for a collection agency for a long time and can tell you the symptoms given describe a predictive dialer perfectly.
Caller ID is also easy to control without spoofing it . Hell I could send 123456789 from a phone at work right now if I wanted to and that has nothing to do with spoofing.

Just because something unusual happens doesn't make it nefarious. That is not say it couldn't be something weird but with the symptoms given chances are it is a normal every day event.

I get them all the time. Turns out I have a phone number that used to belong to FEMA.

At one point FEMA themselves called me accusing me of stealing their number. After explaining to these mental giants for 3 days that I got the number from AT&T and not using their stolen cell (seriously what kind of property management do they have) years after I made the purchase.

I get calls about farm aid, child abuse centers, all kinds of crazy stuff. Most of the time when people hear my voice they just hang up, a few stick around and explain to me the wrong number part.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

reply to post by ZeroReady


Weird calls from various places, typically some scam or other. This number, I did see listed on an "800notes" site, and people there said it was some sort of money scam. That it is disconnected could simply mean enough complaints came through that they got shut off. The timing is a bit weird, but that's probably the case. Numbers I don't recognize, I tend to not answer. Scammers usually don't leave a message.

I remember back in the 90's a bad lightning storm hit a small town on top of one of the highest peaks in my state. A lady's phone started ringing and the I.D. caller showed the names of many dead presidents and Benjamin Franklins name was on it. I've tried to find it but can't. I've been thinking of going to the chronicle office and see if I can get it to put into a thread here, but I haven't had time. It was pretty strange as to why their names would appear on her caller I.D. during this storm.

Me, I've been having some lady call my cellphone. She knows my name and when my wife answers, she tells my wife that I wanted her to call because I was supposed to give her money. The thing is, only two other people have my cell #, one is my dad, and the other is my wife. This lady seems to know a lot about me, according to some of the things my wife said that she said during the call. Now get this, when I answer or my wife gets my phone for me, she hangs up. Very strange. When I call it back, it's been disconnected.

Before this, I had a guy calling atleast a couple times a week asking for someone with my name and he starts talking like he knows me. He said that I called him and left my number on his voicemail, but it never happened. I traced his number and he works for a chemical plant in Charleston, W.Va.. I called it and asked for him but they hung up on me. He never called again. Strange but true.

A couple of things: Telemarketers are not magically indexed for all of their annoyance calls at once. The files at the reverse telephobe www pages are updated over time, from 1 entry up to thousands. Maybe this is a new collection / telemarketing number?

Also: Inserting a 10 digit string of digits that corresponds to an actual telephone number is a courtesy, and lots of places insert a nonsense of disconnected number, to force you to use a specific 8YY number when dialing them back, to route your returned calls through a switchboard, and so on.

Similarly - the DNIS digits might come across with a west coast call back number, even if the incoming call was made from the east coast. They can be all 1 number. They can be less than 10 digits long (5 or 6 is common for call centers and telephones behind a switchboard). The caller ID information you receive on your handset is variable, does not guarantee source and can be spoofed.

I just saw this thread. In the past few weeks, I have also been getting calls from DC for political surveys. I told them to take my name off their list but they keep calling. I know this is a little paranoid but they started happening right when I was posting about the guy who the cops burned in LA.

But at least it was better than last year. Comcast turned off my service and wouldn't turn it back on until they searched the entire house to find the cause of some problem coming from our house. This happened twice!!!
It was creepy beyond belief.

Originally posted by sheepslayer247
I did a quick look and it seems to be a wireless number.

That's all I could find, but often times these types of numbers are from debt collectors or salespeople. They use generic numbers so that you don't know exactly who is calling. The reason they hung up is because the call was made along with a 100 others and one of the other numbers answered first......dropping the other dialed lines. Of course, a computer made the call.

Does that make sense?

edit on 14-3-2013 by sheepslayer247 because: (no reason given)

edit on 14-3-2013 by sheepslayer247 because: (no reason given)

yes, its called robocalls and a class action suit was awarded 15 mil (33 1/3 % to litigators) and the rest being divided up between those who submit a claim.

www.robocallsettlement.com...

go for it, max award is $500 but more than likely 50-100 depending upon the number of claims filed. Above link is email filing if you didn't get the memo

NOTE: The settlement was out of court and can still be appealed

ETA online filing not email, sorry my bad

reply to post by anoncoholic


bump so people see this.

Originally posted by 0zzymand0s
A couple of things: Telemarketers are not magically indexed for all of their annoyance calls at once. The files at the reverse telephobe www pages are updated over time, from 1 entry up to thousands. Maybe this is a new collection / telemarketing number?

Also: Inserting a 10 digit string of digits that corresponds to an actual telephone number is a courtesy, and lots of places insert a nonsense of disconnected number, to force you to use a specific 8YY number when dialing them back, to route your returned calls through a switchboard, and so on.

Similarly - the DNIS digits might come across with a west coast call back number, even if the incoming call was made from the east coast. They can be all 1 number. They can be less than 10 digits long (5 or 6 is common for call centers and telephones behind a switchboard). The caller ID information you receive on your handset is variable, does not guarantee source and can be spoofed.

edit on 20-3-2013 by 0zzymand0s because: (no reason given)

Please..apparently no one wants to hear about DNIS values, CLIDs, ANI or anything else .

A few of us on this thread have tried to explain what these calls are. I am more then willing to explain how predictivenon-predictive dialers and in general a phone call works but many people on this thread are more interested in talking about suing, it being the illuminateNWOfreemasons then reality.

The average person doesn't realize how a phone call works and how CLID is controlled, they would rather assume it's "someone spoofing!"

This somewhat hostile message was brought to you by a stressed and hungry UC engineer that has been working on phones and TFN's all day! (in other words sorry if it sounds cranky)