roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) (03/16/90)
It works both ways. I remember once trying to call somebody
(this was years ago, so I may be distorting the details) and by
mistake got an old lady on the phone who wouldn't respond to my simple
"is this xxx-xxxx?" query. So, I figured I just dialed it wrong,
said I was sorry for I had bothered her, and tried again. Got the
same lady. Obviously I had the wrong number, but she wouldn't give an
inch to any of my queries as to what number I had actually reached,
etc. I tried DA and they gave me back her number again. Obviously
some sort of foul up so I called the operator and asked her for help.
She dialed the number, got the old lady again, who by this time was so
freaked out she could only sob into the phone "why do you keep
bothering me!?" or something like that. I never did resolve the
problem. I feel sorry for the old lady, but she could have prevented
some of her grief is she had just confirmed that I had really reached
the number I thought I dialed.
I have a funnier story about wrong numbers too. One day a
couple of years ago, the phone rings. The caller asks for somebody.
I say I think he has a wrong number ask what number he is trying to
reach. He says 718-636-11238. No, that's not a typo. It didn't
sound right when he said it, but I couldn't figure out why it sounded
funny, so I asked him to repeat it. Yup, he wanted 718-636-11238. I
point out to him that he doesn't have the right number of digits,
thinking how strange it was that there is anybody in the USA who
doesn't know that a phone number must be 7 or 10 digits. Of course
that's true, but this guy was calling from (if memory serves) The
Netherlands. I was a bit surprised when he asked me if I would mind
looking up the correct number for him (seems like an expensive way to
get DA but, hell, if he's willing to pay for the transatlantic call,
I'm game). He gives me the name and an address which must be just a
few buildings away on the next block from me! I find him the number
and we chat a few minutes.
Well, to make a long story short, here's what must have
happened. It's not surprising that the party he was trying to reach
lives near me; after all, he just screwed up in the last few digits
and reached somebody unexpected in the same area code and exchange.
The odd part, is that my phone number is 718-636-1123 and my zip code
is 11238! He must have somehow merged an area code and exchange with
a zip code, dialed the resulting 11 digits (the last of which was
ignored by the US switches) and gotten me.
Now, the unlisted and collect story. We're getting involved
in a legal situation. The details are not important, other than the
telecom part. We will be placing ads in newspapers soliciting
information that may be helpful to us from anybody who might know
anything and happen to see the ad. These people are not supposed to
know who they are calling (other than my first name), and may be
reluctant to call at all, so the ad urges them to call collect. The
calls may be far and few between, and every one is precious, so our
lawyer says to put an answering machine on the line, with an out going
message that starts "Hello, this is Roy. Yes operator, I'll accept
the charges if this is a collect call". To cut down on random calls,
the number should be unlisted.
But I've been reading in telecom digest about these new
fandangled computerized collect call systems which do voice
recognition sans human operator intervention to determine whether to
put the call through. I fear this will interact badly with our
answering machine. I asked our lawyer about that. He says not to
worry, that there is some way for a caller to get a real human
operator on the line. Anybody know more about this?
Also, our confidentiality is important in this matter; all the
callers are supposed to know is our first names. Our lawyer told us a
story of a similar situation in which the caller managed to track down
who he was calling via the phone company. Some people in a similar
situation to us set up a similar phone line with answering machine and
asked people to call collect. Somebody called them, and they ended up
establishing a sort of relationship, getting a series of such collect
calls over a period of time. Once, the caller forgot to call collect
and dialed the number directly. Nobody thought anything of this until
the caller got his phone bill and saw a long distance call to a city
he didn't think he made any calls to. The number was the same number
he had called collect several time before, but that didn't click (it
had never showed up on his phone bill before), so he called the phone
company to queried the charge. The helpful phone company looked it up
and asked him, "You didn't call John Doe in Telco City, Wisconsin on
that day?" That gave the caller everything he need to know to track
down exactly who the mysterious person was that he had been calling
collect for all these weeks was.
It seems odd that the phone company would gladly give out the
name and address belonging to an unlisted phone number in response to
a billing query, but apparantly they did. I once had a similar
unrecognized charge on my bill. I called NY Tel and they quickly came
back with the name of the person belonging to that number. The
confusion was just that I was calling some small town in central New
Jersey but the bill came back as Princeton, which wasn't where I
called (but I guess it went through a Princeton switch). I don't
think it was unlisted, but the billing folks may not even have that
information.
Anyway, the suggested solution from our lawyer is to have a
friend we trust take out the phone in his name, but installed in our
apartment. That way, should an overly helpful telco clerk give out
more information than we would have liked, all anybody could do is
track down our friend, who presumably would clam up. I know this
sounds like something out of a spy novel, but I assure you that the
legal situation is really not that mysterious and our lawyer is just
being paranoid, which I guess is what we're paying him for.
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy
"My karma ran over my dogma"Dave Levenson <dave%westmark@uunet.uu.net> (03/19/90)
In article <5216@accuvax.nwu.edu>, roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes: ... > Now, the unlisted and collect story. We're getting involved > in a legal situation. The details are not important, other than the > telecom part. We will be placing ads in newspapers soliciting > information that may be helpful to us from anybody who might know > anything and happen to see the ad. These people are not supposed to > know who they are calling (other than my first name), and may be > reluctant to call at all, so the ad urges them to call collect... If people call you collect, then they are giving you their first name, as well as their phone number (which appears on your bill when you accept the collect call). Do you expect people to call without knowing who you are when they know that you know who they are? Dave Levenson Voice: 201 647 0900 Fax: 201 647 6857 Westmark, Inc. Internet: dave@westmark.uu.net Warren, NJ, USA UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave [The Man in the Mooney] AT&T Mail: !westmark!dave
Roy Smith <roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu> (03/19/90)
> If people call you collect, then they are giving you their first name, > as well as their phone number [...] Do you expect people to call without > knowing who you are when they know that you know who they are? Strange as it sounds, yes I do. I appreciate the various notes I've gotten on this subject and I might as well respond en masse to them. To the suggestion that I just put in an 800 number, we thought of that already. According to our lawyer, 800 numbers look corporate and the sorts of people we are looking for might be scared off by that. Also, an 800 number that forwards to our regular line means they get a busy signal if I'm on the phone. This phone line will be dedicated to nothing but waiting for those rare but important calls. And, unfortunately, I must respectfully decline to answer queries asking the specifics of what's going on here, other than to assure you that (no matter how bizarre it all sounds) it's really reasonably straight forward. Most of the running around in circles is to satisfy the paranoia of our lawyer. I hesitated bring this up in the first place since I knew I would have to remain mysterious about the background, but I though the telecomm issues, even in isolation, might be interesting. Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy "My karma ran over my dogma"