Phoning Yourself

[festiva76]

Once, many moons ago, I read somewhere that there is a certain number you can dial on your home phone that will cause your phone to ring if you hang up immediately after dialing it. I believe it can be used to test the ringer on the phone. I tried it, and it does work, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. Anyone know?

[Sledman]

Try your phone number.

[Flyboyslc]

Many years ago (10-15, probably) I used to be able to dial our own number and hang up; it would then ring, and you could listen to yourself breathe if you answred it. :) In these days of call waiting, etc; I guess that's no longer an option.

So no, I don't know what you can call to hear your own phone ring. :D

[Shaky Jake]

Yeah, what Sledman said. On some (maybe all?) phone systems, calling your own phone number will trigger a recording. If you then hang up, it will ring back your phone with a message saying someone in the house was trying to reach you, or some such thing ("then why didn't they just yell really loud like usual?").

In a related vein, dialing 711 will produce a recording telling you the number you are calling from.

Shaky Jake

[Hokienautic]

I used to do this as a gag when I was little ... you USED to be able to dial 998-WXYZ, with WXYZ being the last four digits of your phone number (might have been 988-, I can't recall). You'd get some sort of higher-pitched tone than the dial tone, and if you "jiggled the handle" so to speak -- if you tapped on the hangup quickly a few times -- it'd go back to a dial tone. Then, you could hang up and your own phone would ring in a second. That's how I perfected prank phone calls, doing that and then pranking my older brothers, or parents. ;-)

[tomas]

On my system, (GTE), if you dial your own phone number you will hear a "boop" about every 2 seconds. After you hear the boop, hang up the phone. Your phone will ring. When you pick it up, you will hear the same "boop" thus someone on another extension will know the origin of the call.(rats!)

[JoeyBlades]

Jake wrote:


In a related vein, dialing 711 will produce a recording telling you the number you are calling from.


Huh? I thought that was the quick code to locate the nearest gas station / convenience store...

[Necros]

Hokienautic said:

I used to do this as a gag when I was little ... you USED to be able to dial 998-WXYZ, with WXYZ being the last four digits of your phone number (might have been 988-, I can't recall).


In my experience, it depends on your phone systemn. Some may be 993, some may be 997. But add the last four digits of your own phone number, flash the receiver until you hear a click, and raplace it. Your phone will ring.

[johnf]

I don't know about that 711 trick, I gave it a shot and a fax or modem answered (then again I am up in Canada...)

If you are dying to make your phone ring (and you have voicemail):
Call your self.
Press the link button (Switch to the other line)
Hang up.

In a few moments the phone will ring. Properly timed you can record messages of whoever answers the phone saying
Hello? Hello? HELLO!!! @#$%@%^#$^#$%^
<click>

;o)

-JohnF

[handy]

If you have DSL, you can call yourself through a web site & your phone ring.

Any 555-**** number in the USA is a busy signal.

Also, the old trick where you could a nbr to make your phone ring is changed now with the new systems.

[rowrrbazzle]

What you're looking for is your local ringback number. You may be able to find it with a web search.

For many years (and at least until 1980), the ringback number for dial (not touchtone) phones in Chicago was 571-6. Dial 571, and the dial tone came back. Then dial 6 and hang up immediately. This didn't work on for tone. But you could get it to work if you dialed the 6 by pressing the switch-hook rapidly six times!

[tbea925]

711 sounds familiar. It can also be used to dial other phones on your multi-party line.

What? No one remembers multi-party lines?

[light strand]

I remember multi-party lines. Two short rings it was ours, one long it was the folks down the street.

Didn't Peter Brady call himself once to pretend he was popular?

[funneefarmer]

I do remember using one of the ?11 numbers to call the house from the barn, or vice versa one extension to another. You dialed the number then hung up the phone, all the extensions would ring then you could pick up after it stopped ringing (that is assuming someone was actually around to answer the extension). It stopped working around ten or so years ago though.

[SisterCoyote]

I had never heard of calling 711 to find out one's phone number. Everywhere I've lived (all in California) it's been 114. But I haven't had to use that method in a while.

[jb_farley]

handy said:
Any 555-**** number in the USA is a busy signal.


I'm pretty sure that you get information, not a busy signal. At least that's how it is here in Philly. Sidenote, I have never been in an area code where 867-5309 was connected to a real phone.

Asto the self-ringing, here it used to be like 713-XXXX, w/ xxxx being your last four digits. But as soon as they switched over to new computerized digital systems, any number with one in the second place was assumed to be an eleven digit number. Hence it stopped working.

But it was great to set pay phones up and watch people become befuddled and then miffed.

[sk8rixtx]

EVERYONE, THE CORRECT NUMBER TO DIAL IS 991-ABCD, ABCD BEING THE LAST FOUR DIGITS TO YOUR PHONE NUMBER. 991. YEP, DO IT ALL THE TIME. THOUGH IT HASN'T WORKED THE LAST FEW TIMES, MAYBE IT ISN'T POSSIBLE ANYMORE.

[Jophiel]

Sidenote, I have never been in an area code where 867-5309 was connected to a real phone.
Hell, just make it a hijack:

At work once, a few years ago, we tried dialing 867-5309 from our area code. Well, actually my friend did it. Anyway, he was greeted with a recording from some young lass who was at least a little miffed and went on for about 5 minutes how all her callers needed to get a life and leave her the hell alone. I actually felt bad for her for about a minute into it, then she just grew annoying herself. However I never called back.

[Gunslinger]

It's 971-xxxx here. I heard about it a few years ago, wrote it down, and tried it. It worked! I have the note that I wrote down right here in front of me:
971-(last 4 digits of your number)

Hang up twice


I just tried it and it doesn't seem to work anymore.

[Lance Turbo]

Originally posted by Jophiel
Sidenote, I have never been in an area code where 867-5309 was connected to a real phone.
Hell, just make it a hijack:

Blah, blah, blah, etc., etc...

"Blah, blah, blah, etc., etc." mine.

There is no way in hell that I believe this story.

No offence. Feel free to imagine as many smilies as neccessary to make you believe that I mean no offense.

[c-man]

This trick works (at least here in Houston):
dial 380 . It will send you back the number you're calling from.

Useless trick, but amusing for about 4 seconds.

c-man

[Joe_Cool]

Originally posted by Lance Turbo
Originally posted by Jophiel
Sidenote, I have never been in an area code where 867-5309 was connected to a real phone.
Hell, just make it a hijack:

Blah, blah, blah, etc., etc...

"Blah, blah, blah, etc., etc." mine.

There is no way in hell that I believe this story.

No offence. Feel free to imagine as many smilies as neccessary to make you believe that I mean no offense.

in the 505 area code (New Mexico), 867 is the exchange for the town of Bernalillo, and that is an active number (or was, before I moved to the east coast)

[Jophiel]

Trust me, if I was going to start a career of lying on the SDMB, I'd start with a much cooler story than that.

When I was a kid it was a 5-digit no. that they changed occasionally so that only phone co. people would know it.

I've never gotten anything but a busy signal when dialing the no. that I was calling from.

In my area 555-xxxx no.s are phone booths. Many of them won't ring, however, to discourage drug dealers from using them as message centers.

Oh yeah...

Long-distance Information is (areacode) 555-1212.

[Bill H.]

Re: 867-5309. MP3.com says
Story Behind The Song
Tommy Tutone: 867-5309/Jenny
(...)
Lead singer Tommy Heath told Retro Rewind about the song:

"There was a young lady who mixed sound in a club in California and she gave me her phone number to give to my partner and guitarist Jim Keller, and I wrote it on the bathroom wall. We laughed about that later, and they went out a couple of times. He ended up writing a song about it with Alex Call. She was a good sport about it, but she did change her number. So there really is a Jenny, and she's a very nice woman. It was
a real phone number; the area code was in the San Jose area. We apologize to all the people in the country who had that phone number and whose lives we may have wrecked."

Bonus: During the song's chart run People Magazine thought they would give the band a taste of their own medicine by running their actual home numbers in one of their issues.

I live in San Jose (408 area code), and my prefix is 867, so I know that end of the story is possible. I've never dialed the number.
Hey, great practical joke: dial all the 408 867-xxxx numbers and tell the recipient, "Bill H. you suck!"

Also, back on track: The numbers you call that tell you what number you are calling from are called Automatic Numbering Identification or "ANI" numbers. They are different in different places. A few I know of that are active in the Bay Area:
211 2244
211 4567
1010732 14123693106

Also, check out http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Realm/5129/codes1.htm

[GaWd]

I live in San Jose (408 area code), and my prefix is 867, so I know that end of the story is possible. I've never dialed the number.
Hey, great practical joke: dial all the 408 867-xxxx numbers and tell the recipient, "Bill H. you suck!"



I was gonna say that it was an active prefix in San Jose. Never knew the story behind the song though, really a cool tidbit.

Also, dialing 971-xxxx for a ringback will not work in San Jose, because...it's My Prefix! So, dialing a 971-xxxx number in Cali will only prompt you for a 1 and an area code to continue. :)

-Sam

[Lance Turbo]

Originally posted by Jophiel
Trust me, if I was going to start a career of lying on the SDMB, I'd start with a much cooler story than that.

Scenario 1
Someone has the phone number 867-5309. People call her all the time. Instead of getting her number changed, she leaves a five minute long outgoing message rant that tells callers to get lives and stop bugging her. Therefore, even people who have a real reason to call her (e.g. her grandmother) have to listen to that vituperative message before leaving a message of their own. That makes a lot of sense.

Scenario 2
You said that it was actually your friend that called the number. Maybe it was even a friend of a friend. Somewhere a long the line someone lied to you. That makes a lot more sense.

I never said you were lying. I only said that I didn't believe your story.

[stuyguy]

Lance wrote:

"Therefore, even people who have a real reason to call her (e.g. her grandmother) have to listen to that vituperative message before leaving a message of their own."

Not necessarily, Lance. My folks have an answering machine that allows callers "in the know" (like my siblings and I) to hit the # sign on our phone while their message is playing to skip over their outgoing message and go straight to the "beep."

[handy]

Okay, the reason I said 555 is because all films, sitcoms, tv programs, etc, use 555.....don't any of you notice? :-)

[friedo]

The short answer is it's different in every area. Try the alt.2600 FAQ (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-2600/faq/), section C-12: What is a ringback number?

[Pandora]

Originally posted by handy

Okay, the reason I said 555 is because all films, sitcoms, tv programs, etc, use 555.....don't any of you notice? :-)

This used to be true... but it doesn't seem to hold up any more. I haven't seen anyone on TV or in the movies use 555-* in the last few years.
Here is Philly, 555-1212 is information, and there are other "555" numbers that are "service" numbers of various kinds.
I think the phone company may be moving towards placing 555 back in circulation for standard telephone numbers.

[Missy2U]

Well, never let it be said that I have too much time on MY hands.

867-5309 either rang, gave a busy signal (not a fast busy - a normal busy), gave an answering machine, or a fax number in all 6 of the area codes in this area. Yes, we have way too many area codes, yes it is a big pain the the rear.

555-1212 around here gets you information.
555-1111 gets you information.
555-9999 gets you information.
555-Biteme gets you information (I've always wanted to do that!)

[black rabbit]

When I was in junior high, somebody showed me the ringback (99?-last four digits) trick, though I can't remember what the third digit was supposed to be. It only seemed to work on payphones. On especially dull days, I would ask the teacher to use the can, get a hall pass, and then haul ass to every last one of the fifteen or so payphones scattered throughout the school (this was before fear of student drug dealers led to their removal). It frustrated the security guards to no end... empty halls, silent save the incessant ringing echoing through the buildings. It also proved to be a good diversion that let me enjoy a Camel in the boy's room in peace.

[Jophiel]

Ok.. last time I'm going to reply to this since it's turning from a hijack into a gunfight (or something).

My friend dialed the number. I stood next to him. I listened on the speaker phone. Message was as described. This was right as all those 80's albums starting hitting the TV commercials 24 hours a day, so for every hour of television you watched, you were sure to hear a snippet of the song at least once. If you have any other questions, I suggest you start dialing 867-5309 on every area code until you find her and ask her yourself about it.

[DRY]

In LA (at least, when I was growing up), it was "991199", if I recall correctly (it WASN'T seven numbers). And no, the "1199" was not the last four digits of my number.

[Fernmeldetruppe]

I can't add to the original post, but as of July, 711 will be used for access to TRS (Telecommunications Relay Services) throughout the US.

http://www.fcc.gov/cib/trs.html
http://www.fcc.gov/711/

Also, you can often dial any NXX-9997 number and hear a 1 kHz tone. It used to constantly repeat intself, but the the local telephone companies have been shortening it to 2 seconds recently and/or getting rid of it. I don't why it was originally used but it can be used to gauge the quality of your connection.

[galt]

Since the link above to the alt.2600 faq is only a pointer to the first part of the faq, which doesn't include the answer to the question, here's a link to the section which lists a bunch of known ringback numbers for various areas.

http://www.jssquires.freeserve.co.uk/a2600/faq/c/c-13.htm

Question for phone weenies: how does this apply to phones behind a PBX, if at all? How about cellphones?

[DRY]

Originally posted by DRY
In LA (at least, when I was growing up), it was "991199", if I recall correctly (it WASN'T seven numbers). And no, the "1199" was not the last four digits of my number.

I believe I screwed this up: Upon further reflection, it may have been "119911", and not vice versa. :eek: I'll have to test it (both variations) and see if it still works.

[GaWd]

Oh, also try http://www.phonelosers.org for another zine-type of phreak site.


-Sam

[handy]

thanks for posting that info Fernmeldetruppe. Cuz each Relay I use has to use 10 numbers, thus, to call me people have to remember 20 nbrs in all. lol.