I was just wondering with the advent of caller id and more advanced call tracing procedures if people still make obscene phone calls?
I haven’t received one in a while!
<— kidding
Have you?
I’ve never received an obscene phone call unless you count scheduled phone sex calls (the reason speaker phones were invented IMHO). But yes, working for the phone company we’re constantly getting reports of obscene/harassing phone calls. Not everyone has Caller ID and not everyone realizes they can backtrace numbers through *69. Most of the ones I hear about are domestic in nature, ex-boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands/wives calling their former partners and being nasty. A cow-orker of mine is divorcing her husband and he calls her constantly at work and on her cell phone.
Actually, we received one about a week and a half ago. So did my wife’s sister & family, and brother & family. It turns out that all of the phone numbers chosen were taken from my FIL’s cell phone book.
When my FIL got a new cell phone for work (their company changed over), the cell phone company (as a service) downloaded all of the phone books from the old phones and put them on the new phones. Apparently, they kept copies - and then someone used the information to make phone calls. The police and the phone company are investigating. I understand the excuse given out is that the cell phone companies computer was hacked, but I wonder if it wasn’t an inside job. Not to mention, why was the information kept, instead of deleting right after the transfer?
Anyway, it does still happen, unfortunately.
I got one a year or so ago and it cracked me up since I did have caller id and there was the name and number of the caller sitting merrily in my callerID box!
People can block their caller ID so brighter perverts may still get away with random obscene calls from time to time as long as no one reports them. (They can only block the caller ID info from reaching the called person - the phone company still knows who called and when. There is another code that logs calls but I forget what it is offhand *57 maybe?)
I rarely answer my phone (preferring instead to let the machine handle telemarketers, wrong numbers, my mother, etc.), but I do get the occasional attempt at obscenity. Sadly, I think it’s the same pre-teen fellow every time, and his messages are usually pretty lame. I could *69 him, but why ruin his fun? I’m hoping he’ll outgrow it eventually.
When I was in college (I graduated in 2000), I and a few of my dorm mates would get obscene phone calls of both the heavy breathing and the “hi, I’m taking a survey of sexual habits for my sociology class” varieties pretty frequently. Since graduation, I have been blessedly unharrassed, though.
My neighbors just went through a few weeks hell. Return call didn’t work, but call trace did. (*something-something). It logs the number at the phone company and police can request it later when you file a report.
My neighbor’s took my advice, traced the call everytime, went to the police, they got the record and visited the guy. Turns out to be a 16 year old kid with a cell phone.
No charges were pressed. The police assured my neighbors that the kid wouldn’t be doing that again.
Yes, they still exist. Actually, as a telephone operator, I receive some occasionally…usually, it’s just kids playing around, but there have been a few of the more disturbing type. Strange thing is, I have their phone number right there–you can’t block it from me. (Kids are often smart enough to use payphones, perverts are not.) However, you can block a number from *69 and caller ID. Telemarketers do that all the time.
Many people feel that they are being “harassed” by people calling them and then hanging up right away once they answer. Often, though, these are telemarketers using automatic dialers. The dialer calls a whole bunch of numbers at once. The first people who answer are sent to the next available telemarketer for your convienience :). If there is no telemarketer available to take your call, then it just hangs up on you with no explanation–as if telemarketers weren’t annoying enough already!
A guy I went to college with was convicted of harrassment in the last year or so. Phone records were a major part of the evidence but AFAIK he confessed to everything. I think he got three years in jail. Phone calls were only part of his stalking campaign, which included sending hard core porn to the unfortunate woman with her picture superimposed and ringing her from a cell phone telling her what washing was currently drying outside her house, so that she would feel even more threatened knowing he was nearby. The phone calls were apparently very extreme and he sustained this over a two year period before his arrest.
He was a completely likeable everyday guy with a family. He was a museum curator and I went to the launch of a number of exhibitions there. He was pleasant to have a pint with and there was nothing creepy about him whatsoever. You just never know.
Back in the 1970s / 80s, the Australian telco monopoly had a long-running very schmaltzy TV campaign advertising international calls. It featured a woman receiving a call from her daughter in London. “Memories” starts to play in the background, she gets all weepy with joy, and calls out to the others in the house that her daughter is on the line, and everyone gathers around the phone.
In a send-up of this on a sketch comedy show, the recreated the ad perfectly, and the teary-eyed woman says, “It’s the obscene phone caller again!!”, and everyone eagerly queues for a chance to talk to him.
Eh, y’ had to be there. 
Back in the 1970s / 80s, the Australian telco monopoly had a long-running very schmaltzy TV campaign advertising international calls. It featured a woman receiving a call from her daughter in London. “Memories” starts to play in the background, she gets all weepy with joy, and calls out to the others in the house that her daughter is on the line, and everyone gathers around the phone.
In a send-up of this on a sketch comedy show, the recreated the ad perfectly, and the teary-eyed woman says, “It’s the obscene phone caller again!!”, and everyone eagerly queues for a chance to talk to him.
Eh, y’ had to be there.
*57 “marks” the call in the switch. So that when the outraged recipient calls the cops to report the harassment and the cops get the necessary paperwork to the phone company, the phone company knows which calls to print out from the incoming calls.
I’d agree that people in college tend to get more (and probably make more) obscene phone calls than the average population. My entire floor was being harassed by some jerk-off my freshman year. So, yes, they do still exist.
Yes, Obscene Phone Calls still exist - it’s called Telemarketers calling at Dinner Time.
I work in a call center for a national company whose 800 number is all over the place. We get plenty obscene phone calls. One guy was especially amusing, calling and asking about our socks and telling us about his. It lasted about two days before we could get him blocked. He was only mildly creepy and the fun part was he hung up on the guys. They all got jealous because they never got to talk to the “sock guy”
OMG! The sock guy? I had the shoe guy!
Well, I never talked to him, but his calls were the stuff of legend at a former job of mine.
Ah memories…that reminds me of the guy who called in while I was training a new hire and, while setting up a service order started quizzing her about whether she liked “college boys” or “rockers.” Because he was a college boy but his rommate was a rocker. We got through the call with a minimum of nastiness and then upon investiagtion figured out this jackass called in to set up an order and harass the operator, then would call back and cancel the order and harass that operator. I should only have that kind of free time.
[ul]
[sup]Isn’t that what he had in mind?[/sup][/ul]
[Dana Gould]
I feel sorry for Don Knotts…he could never make oscene phone call. His voice is too recognizable. The phone would ring…
Hello?
DK: I’ve been looking at you through the bedroom window. Sniff
Is this Don Knotts?
DK: Screams and hangs up phone Somehow, they always know it’s me
[/DG]
I work for a wireless phone company. My second week answering customer calls, I got an obscene phone call. I had to ask the guy to repeat himself three times before I realized it was obscene, given that he had a very thick accent and was extremely drunk, but eventually he got his point across.
I’ve also helped to mine our records for all of the information we were going to pass on to the police about the man who called in to threaten to blow up one of our stores, and about once a week I see a cautionary e-mail about somebody who wants to swear at the male reps and has an endless curiousity about the underwear of the female reps, or vice versa.
These people are calling a company that provides an ongoing service to them. Each of these folks was, as soon as their call was answered, speaking to someone who not only had their name but had their address, social security number, credit card numbers, a list of everyone they’d called on their wireless for the last six months, bank account information, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
I’m not a nice man, but I shudder to think of the kind of hell I could put those people through with the information I have at my disposal.
They still keep calling. The fellow from the Worst Case Scenario recording they play to us in training is still in prison, and will be for some time to come.
They still keep calling.
I don’t think I’ve ever received an obscene phone call. But I took a report the other night from a lady who had just gotten a particularly nasty one.
The funny part was the pervert called collect…and she accepted it.