kityss@ihlpf.att.com (11/29/90)
In article <14952@accuvax.nwu.edu> weave@brahms.udel.edu (Ken Weaverling) describes how his girl friend had "Return*called" a crank call, yelling at the caller, only to have that person return the call and act as if she were the crank caller. He concludes: >>We sat around puzzled for a moment, then finally figured out that >>there must be several extensions in their house and the original crank >>call must have originated, perhaps, with a child, and the child's >>Mother answered our Return*Call. Matt Funkchick responds - >Or else the real crank caller was at another number and was forwarding >calls to another one of his/her victims. And our Moderator Notes - >This raises a good point. When a call reaches you >via forwarding through some other number, does 'return call' go to the >forwarded number or the original caller? Likewise for Call Screening >and Caller-ID: *whose* ID gets passed for the purpose of callback >and/or screening, etc? The answer to all the above is that the original calling parties number is what is passed in any chain of call forwarding. Example: A calls B, B is forwarded to C (so A's call rings at C) - for any of the CLASS services C's memory space will contain A's phone number. So CallerID, Return*Call, or any of the screening features will work with A's number. (Need I mention this is only if there is complete SS7 connectivity between all the COs involved - and that all three parties are in the same LATA.) The only time B's memory space will be updated is if they have Call Forwarding Don't Answer - then their memory space will contain A's phone number (as will C's). So the original poster's problem either was caused by the person who answered their Return*Call being in on the "joke", or by the person being unaware that an outgoing call had been made from that location. Arnette Baker kityss@ihlpf.att.com
NJS@ibm.com (Nicholas J. Simicich) (11/30/90)
In article <14952@accuvax.nwu.edu> weave@brahms.udel.edu (Ken
Weaverling) describes how his girl friend had "Return*called" a crank
call, yelling at the caller, only to have that person return the call
and act as if she were the crank caller.
Various people come up with various complicated explanations about how
the phone system might have been confused by call forwarding, or
people where the callback call was answered might have been either
without knowledge or confused, or even intentional dupes.
The simplest explanation is the one that seems to be ignored by most
people: The phone switching system simply misrouted the Return*Call,
or garbled the number it remembered.
Nick Simicich (NJS at WATSON on bitnet, njs@ibm.com)
SSI AOWI #3958, HSA #318john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (12/02/90)
"Nicholas J. Simicich" <NJS@ibm.com> writes: > The simplest explanation is the one that seems to be ignored by most > people: The phone switching system simply misrouted the Return*Call, > or garbled the number it remembered. It was probably ignored because of the virtually zero probability that it was the case. SS7 data is error-checked and garbled data would be rejected as invalid. Today's network does not "simply misroute" calls. And parity-checked RAM does not "garble" numbers that it "remembers". When I receive a wrong number, I always assume error on the part of the caller, not in the switching network. To quote a well-known radio doctor, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
erik@naggum.uu.no (Erik Naggum) (12/05/90)
John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com> writes: > When I receive a wrong number, I always assume error on the part of > the caller, not in the switching network. To quote a well-known radio > doctor, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." Well, I can relate a weird story. A girlfriend of mine, Deb, lives on Long Island, NY, local number 798-xyxx. In May this year, something happened which I have not been able to find a good explanation for, and it annoyed one poor man a lot. Well, I call Deb, get some person whose voice I don't recognize, ask for Deb, and get a very polite "I'm sorry, there is no Deb, here. You must have dialled the wrong number." Sorry to bother the man, I apologize and hang up. Then I very carefully dial the same number, again. Same result. He is a little less polite this time, but I explain that I was careful this time, and that I'm as annoyed as he is. I try a third time. Same result. I apologize profusely and he understands that I'm not trying to bug him. This is clearly a case for Operator Assistance, expensive as it is in this country. She, of course, doesn't have any problems at all. Being called by the operator from Norway, specifically asking for her, made her parents very nervous (they have family here). Not being home the situation wasn't resolved. Next day, I call again, this time from my office. Same result. Dave, as I learn the poor man's name is, is willing to call Deb's number to see if something is wrong there. Three-way calling is nice. No problems. I give up that day. The third day, I try calling from a payphone, only to annoy Dave even more, but this time he tells me what his phone number is, provided that I don't call again. I say that's OK, and I'll go hunt for the problem. His number is 798-qrqq. There's a pattern to this. I call maintenance, and raise a veritable hell, having wasted more than $15 on failed calls, which I know are not my fault. I imagine that in the U.S. it would be relatively easy to get this refunded; not so in Norway. Two days later, a service engineer calls me to confirm that the problem has gone away, and asks me if I had called the wrong number many times. They had apparently had to call Dave both direct and indirect to trace the call, several times, and he was extremely pissed, according to the service rep. The problem was local to parts of Oslo, and the operator I called was not in Oslo. What exactly the problem was, I never learned. Subscribers don't know anything about internal things in the phone system by definition, and no exceptions to this rule are allowed to exist. The service rep didn't want to even try to tell me what was going on. Sigh. When things worked again, it took some effort to clear the problems caused by the operator calling, as well. I don't know what the problem was, but it wasn't the caller (me), it wasn't some fancy run-away special function invoked at the callee side, and it wasn't anything the telco people would admit to be their fault. I don't see what it could be if not some switching network problem. [Erik Naggum] Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway
erik@naggum.uu.no (Erik Naggum) (12/06/90)
Recently there has been much discussion about a prank with forwarded
calls, and several very complex theories of why it works have been
forwarded. I may be missing something, but isn't the point as simple
as this:
- Prankster, A, forwards his calls to random third party, C
- Prankster calls someone, B
- B return*call prankster, A, _which_forwards_to_C_
Seems so obvious to me. Also reminds me of a couple nice stories from
when "new services" came to Oslo. Norway uses the CEPT standard for
function invocation, and therein lies part of the fun. To order
waking or some other ringing at some later time, dial *55*HHMM#.
Interestingly, a lot of people dialled *55*0700#, but all the ads for
the new services didn't say anything about where this was available,
except that you needed touch-tone phones, that * should break the dial
tone, etc, so a huge number of people actually called 550700, a
grocery store at the ground floor of a compartment building. The
owner was hard of hearing, and had the phone ring out LOUD! Hundreds
of users called this number after people went to bed in this building,
every night. I have no idea how it all ended, but this made it to the
newspapers, who were very anti-new-technology, as expected.
Another fun thing was to use this with call forwarding, which is
enabled with *21*number#. Here's how to do it: Order waking with *55*
for some very inconvenient time, and forward your calls to someone you
don't like very much. Be sure to enable the forwarding at a time no
one will call you. No more than two months went by before the waking
service was redefined to override call forward.
Now, the third fun thing with call forwarding was related to me. Call
forwarding is free in Norway, and thus is limited to certain local
areas, the pager service, and stuff like that. (Forwarding your call
to the time of day service is a nice hint to people who call you too
late at night...) Bugs in the software happen every now and then, so
at a place outside Oslo, call forwarding outside your local calling
area was enabled, but the forwarder payed for the non-local call.
This was also true for payphones.
So, the bright young telephone users discovered that they could
forward calls from payphones to BBS'es all over the world, and then go
home and call the payphone. Voila. (Although it took me almost two
hours on the phone, this incident was confirmed by a telco rep, who
insisted on calling me back before telling me anything. He said it
was one of the more serious blunders they had made, but declined to
give any indication of the extent of lost revenue. They would not
attempt to find out who did it, since they couldn't prove who had
called.)
[Erik Naggum]
Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway