Darn you, I was just about to say that!
When beepers were common, there was an issue with people using 9-1-1 as a signal that there is some sort of situation. For example, if the main server goes down, the System Admin wants to be paged with 9-1-1, so they know they have to get the server back up.
Many people agreed with this, and then when they saw 911 on their beepers would call 911 and ask why 911 had paged them.
Caller ID spoofing can result in someone calling 911 and appearing as you were the one who called. This is a big problem with VOIP calls.
Nah. It’s a cordless, but pretty new and the battery is till good.
Well, it seems the operator believed me as the police never came by to yell at me or to check on things. Well not believed me as such, but decided I was lying in a way that wasn’t worth checking up on.
Is it possible that the 911 operator misdialed when returning a call? I would expect this to be an automated function, but perhaps in this case it was manual.
Erroneous signals sometimes happen in the system system with all those miles of lines and relay stations. Unless it happens again, you’ll never find out why it happened.
Here are more sinister reasons to worry about.
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Somebody opened the service box on your house and plugged in their phone to dial 911, and then hung up. They don’t even have to unplug their phone and reconnect your phone if they used a splitter.
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Your neighbor has a phone that uses the same frequency and when they dialed 911 it went through you base unit not their’s. Now they are dying or dead without help.
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Somebody’s electronics including things like a baby monitor or remote emergency hand unit interferes with your wireless phone.
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Your phone has started to malfunction and you will be getting in trouble as it continues to do this. It doesn’t even have to be tones as pulse dialing still is on off which is easy for a malfunction to cause to send over the line.
I was thinking that too. And by the way I can’t believe I’m even reading this and don’t know why? So were you charged with calling 911 when it wasn’t an Emergency?
I remember one night the local sheriff deputies showing up at our door, saying someone had dialed 911 from our place and then hung up. I’m a little fuzzy on the details, as I was sound asleep and they woke me up so I could identify myself and reassure them that I was not being held against my will. My husband gave them a tour of the house and, satisfied it had been some sort of error, they left.
The creepiness factor was reduced when I realized that it was actually reassuring that, if I ever was in a bad situation, even if I didn’t manage to talk to 911 the mere act of dialing it might be sufficient to gain assistance.
Most likely operator error, but 911 relies on the caller ID system to identify calls. When a call goes through, the identifier data (called ANI) gets pushed out and is turned into callerID data.Anyone with the right equipment can fake ANI. Internet telephony makes this much, much easier than ever.
Perhaps someone was pranking 9/11 and was using you as the caller. Ive read that people will do this, say something like, “There are armed men here shooting people” and then the SWAT team shows up and smashes up the place or shoots someone. Perhaps you were targeted by such people and the 9/11 operator thought it was fishy and called back to verify.
Building your system of sending armed men to homes on ANI is beyond stupid. We need better infrastructure.
I’ve heard that Caller ID data can be spoofed but I thought I remember hearing that the info that the 911 emergency services receives is from a different system. And in fact, the Wikipedia article on ANI says that it’s not at all synonymous with Caller ID.
At my work they changed the ‘outside line’ number from 9 to 6 for the same reason. The email explaining it said the company was collectively placing 30-40 911 calls per month by accident.
Our court just did the same, but the outgoing digit is now 7 and not 9.
You know, I read about a sensible solution like that, and compare it to my old company which just browbeat people to not mis-dial because they couldn’t be bothered to change that “dial 9 to get out”, and wish there was more sanity in corporate America.
My wife regularly makes calls from our home line to the UK for work purposes. The first three digits she presses to accomplish this are 0-1-1. One day she started making a call and heard the ringing tone after pressing a couple of buttons, so she hung up the phone and redialed.
About two minutes later a police car complete with twirling lights was at out front and a young policeman was knocking on the front door. He told us that they had a “911 hangup” from our home and he was checking out the situation.
Works for me.
I may be more than just a single change. One reason “9” is often used in PBX systems is that other digits are part of internal intercom systems, and “1” and “0” have other uses. So often 2…8 are in use as a partial intercom number (like dial 328 for Mary). To change the outside line code in a large company, they may have to reprogram many other extension numbers as well.
Might be sensible, but not exactly voluntary. The county was threatening them with some major fines and some kind of legal action before they got their ass in gear to make any changes.
really?? normally i get a message saying the call can’t be completed.
The post you’re responding to is almost ten years old. It might have been the case back then. Especially if it was a landline.
Connor, hon, this thread is nearly a decade old.
Welcome to the Dope.
ETA, don’t be embarrassed, we’ve all done it.
I had a cellphone (non smart) with exposed buttons. I locked it to avoid butt dialing. Unfortunately, locked phones still are required to be able to make emergency calls. So when it buttdialed, it would only call 911. And even if my butt hung up the call, they would always call back until they reached me. I couldn’t figure out a work around.