kg19+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kurt A. Geisel) (04/21/89)
An unnamed acquaintance of mine at an unnamed university [not this one] kept telling me about this trick he was using to make all his long distance phone calls. At first, I didn't believe him at all because it sounded like there was no way it would work. But, he is quite persistant at boasting about this trick and a friend confirmed that he is actually doing it. Then, I began to tell him it was a dangerous anomoly and he should stop now before it catches up with him. Anyway, here is how it goes: 1) Place a call from a pay phone, but go through the long distance operator and tell them that you want to charge to number x. 2) Give them the number of another payphone. 3) Have friend answer the payphone and agree to accept charges. 4) The call goes through (!) and presumable the payphone gets "charged"! Now, it would seem to me that the operator would be able to see right away that the number to charge to was a payphone. It shouldn't work unless this service branch is surprisingly ignorant. Furthermore, after doing for months, the phone company should eventually realize that this bills are going into the ether... Is this for real? Will they ever find out? Will this misguided person get a mysterious bill at the end of his college education for $50,453.23? Has anyone heard of such trickery working? - Kurt Kurt Geisel SNAIL : Carnegie Mellon University 65 Lambeth Dr. ARPA : kg19+@andrew.cmu.edu Pittsburgh, PA 15241 UUCP : uunet!nfsun!kgeisel "I will not be pushed, filed, indexed, stamped, BIX : kgeisel briefed, debriefed, or numbered!" - The Prisoner
dkrause@orion.cf.uci.edu (Doug Krause) (04/23/89)
If nothing else, the phone company could contact the person that you called and say, "Who called you at 9:16pm on the 23rd of June?" Douglas Krause CA Prop i: Ban Gummie Bears(tm)! University of California, Irvine ARPANET: dkrause@orion.cf.uci.edu Welcome to Irvine, Yuppieland USA BITNET: DJKrause@ucivmsa
e118-ak@euler.berkeley.edu (e118 student) (04/24/89)
When I was in Australia in 1987, I placed a couple of calls to the US billed either collect or third-number. The Australian operator called a US operator to do a "coin phone check" on the number billed. My impression was that this was a specific check not automatically done. In short, the trick of calling from a pay phone and billing third-number to another pay phone will work unless the operator does a coin check. The most likely route to apprehending the person using this trick would be to inquire of the person called whom they know in the area of the origin of the call. The closest it could come to airtight would be to call from a payphone to a payphone billed to a third payphone.
nao@bellcore.bellcore.com (N Ostroff) (04/24/89)
In volume 9, issue 141, message 2, kg19+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kurt A. Geisel) describes how to make free long distance phone calls by calling collect from pay phone A to a friend waiting at pay phone B. About two years ago this scheme made headline news in New York City. It worked so well that NY Telephone disabled incoming calls to pay phones while the problem was solved. What made the fraud possible was a change in pay phone NXX codes. When fewer pay phones existed, they all shared the same NXX codes. Only pay phones were assigned these numbers. In this way, an operator could immediately tell whether a collect call or third-party billed call was being directed to a pay phone by checking the NXX code - obviously the operator would say something clever like, "I'm sorry, your call can not go through." when a caller tried this trick. However, NY Tel started numbering pay phones with arbitrary NXX codes making it impossible for an operator to differentiate between pay phones and regular phones in NYC. At least this was true until phone companies installed a database to identify all phones unwilling or unable to accept collect and third-party billed calls. I'd be surprised if your friend can still call from pay phone A to another person at pay phone B. Neil Ostroff Bell Communications Research UUCP : bcr!maestro!nao
pozar@toad.com (Tim Pozar) (04/25/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0141m02@vector.dallas.tx.us> kg19+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kurt A. Geisel) writes: >1) Place a call from a pay phone, but go through the long distance >operator and tell them that you want to charge to number x. > >2) Give them the number of another payphone. > >3) Have friend answer the payphone and agree to accept charges. > >4) The call goes through (!) and presumable the payphone gets "charged"! > >Now, it would seem to me that the operator would be able to see right >away that the number to charge to was a payphone. It shouldn't work >unless this service branch is surprisingly ignorant. Furthermore, after >doing for months, the phone company should eventually realize >that this bills are going into the ether... > >Is this for real? Will they ever find out? Will this misguided person >get a mysterious bill at the end of his college education for $50,453.23? In this area, pay fone numbers used to start with a '9' (ie. xxx-9xxx). Operators would be able to identify pay phones in this manner. I imagine in this day and age of ESS systems, that there must be some indication that a number is a payphone since when I try to charge calls to another number from payphones, the operator needs to get an ok from the charged number, and when I do this from a private phone the operator just puts the call through. I do know that when fradlent billing occurs, the phone company will call the numbers that the caller called and ask the people who called during those times to track the person down. If this guy that is doing this, only did once or twice, he may get away with it. If he is doing this all the time, he will get caught. Tim -- ...sun!hoptoad!\ Tim Pozar >fidogate!pozar Fido: 1:125/406 ...lll-winken!/ PaBell: (415) 788-3904 USNail: KKSF / 77 Maiden Lane / San Francisco CA 94108
eboston@hpbsla.hp.com (Ed_Boston) (04/25/89)
Most operators can see that a phone number is a pay phone. I the area that I grew up in, all pay phones had a prefix of 978 or something like that. Unless you saw your friend doing this, I wouldn't believe them. If you have seen them doing it, I would suggest that you talk to the person and tell them to stop. Also, let the phone company know how the person is doing thins. I AM NOT SUGGESTING YOU TURN THE PERSON IN SO NO FLAMES ABOUT IT!! This would be your choice. It is people like this that keep our phone bills so high! Ed Boston