Linc Madison <rmadison@euler.berkeley.edu> (02/04/90)
In article <3250@accuvax.nwu.edu> David Tamkin writes: >X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 56, message 6 of 9 >John Higdon wrote in TELECOM Digest, Volume 10, Issue 51: >| Both my Sprint FONCARD and my Pac*Bell calling card have numbers that >| bear no resemblance to mine or anyone else's phone number. >When the old GTE Sprint and U.S.Tel merged, US Sprint replaced the old >nine-digit, no-surcharge travel codes with the fourteen-digit >surcharged FONcard numbers. Naturally, they sent me a number >including my telephone number. I phoned them screaming: it's bad >enough that they stick us with a surcharge they never seemed to need >before, but to reduce my security from nine digits to four was >unthinkable. Well, I suppose I have the best of both worlds -- my MCI card number is based upon a real phone number which I remember very easily, but it is a phone number now no longer in service. (I'm not defrauding anyone -- MCI bills me separately; the base phone number was simply a convenient device for arriving at a card number.) Also, there *will* be one way to make sure that calling card numbers don't match anyone's phone number, even after NNX area codes. My old fictitious-number calling cards, from SW Bell, Pac Bell, and US Sprint, were all of the form NNN-1/0XX-XXXX-XXXX. This format will still guarantee a no-match to any phone number. It also greatly simplified things for Pac Bell, because your account number with them is just your phone number, so they had to give me an impossible phone number for my special card. Thus, I was (415) 158-XXXX. For further security, they replaced "415" with a different NNN on the card number. Linc Madison = rmadison@euler.berkeley.edu
weiland%cell.mot.COM@uunet.uu.net (Michael Weiland) (02/06/90)
When I lived in Chicago, I had a U.S.Sprint FONcard, whose number was my home number plus a PIN. I moved (to a suburb) two years ago, and was surprised that although I had a new number, my FONcard number remained the same (containing my old number). Since then, of course, 312 and 708 have split, so the number on my FON card is a different area code as well as different number. It's just as well -- as has been pointed out here, why have a phone number as part of the account number.
apc@cblpe.att.com (Alan P Curtis) (02/08/90)
In article <3547@accuvax.nwu.edu> motcid!weiland%cell.mot.COM@uunet.uu.net (Michael Weiland) writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 78, message 3 of 13 }... so the number on my FON card is a different }area code as well as different number. }It's just as well -- as has been pointed out here, why have a phone }number as part of the account number. I wonder what happens when the person WITH that phone number goes and gets a FON card??? Alan P. Curtis | AT&T Bell Labs | apc@cblpe.ATT.COM