TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers - VoIP

Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers - VoIP

Paul Robinson (paul@paul-robinson.us)
Fri, 08 Sep 2006 23:13:39 -0400

On 7/19/2006, DLR wrote:

> To change the direction of this thread a bit I got a call yesterday on
> my Sprint cell phone from 303-720-1234. I had no idea at the time
> where area code 303 was so I let it go to voice mail. But they didn't
> leave a message. So today I tried to call it back and got a "no such
> number exists" type of message. And I can't find anyone with this
> number via Google searches and don't really want to pay for more
> information.

> Now to be honest it looks a bit bogus to me. 1234 and all.

> Anyone in the 303 area care to try and call it locally and see what it is?

It is not the 1234 at the end that is suspicious, it is the '303-720'
that looked suspicious even before I looked it up to confirm what I
suspected.

303 and 720 are overlay area codes for the same place, the Denver
Colorado metropolitan area. No telephone company would assign as
prefixes, codes which are used in the same or an adjacent area simply
because the possibility of confusion would be tremendous.

I live in Northern Virginia, which has both 703 and 571. Nearby is
Washington, DC (202), South and West Maryland (301 and 240), and south
virginia (540). There is not going to be a 703-571, a 571-703, a
202-703, a 202-301 or any similar combination because of the potential
for confusion.

Basically anyone that has their own PBX can program the caller-id
number generated for outgoing calls. I routinely get calls from
companies that either only display their toll free (800/888 etc.)
number, or generate a fake number like 999-999-9999 or 000-000-0000.

This can be done with some VOIP providers as well, depending on how
they set up their systems.

Further, as has probably been mentioned here, you can purchase a
calling card for 10c a minute that will allow you to call into an 800
number and set the originating number on calls made using the card, so
you can give any number you want as the caller-id value.

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