For a couple of months now, my personal home phone has been getting several calls a day from people expecting to be connected to a conference call set-up. They call in the middle of the night, during the day, early morning - you name it. It is really annoying because I have an 83-year-old in the home whose sleep keeps getting interrupted.
Anyway, when I talk to the callers (those who don’t immediately hang up on me) they seem somewhat evasive about where they got the number. Some claim that they got it from the internet and have offered up “freeconferencecall.com” and “freeconference.com” and even “freeconferencepro.com” as the source of my phone number.
I called those sites, spoke to reps and all deny giving out any number like mine, or similar to it.
What is odd though is the way a number of callers try to evade answering my question about the origin of how they got the number to begin with. “A friend gave it to me” is something I hear often. When I ask them for their friend’s name and number so I can track this down, I am always declined, sometimes abruptly. It is as if they are protecting someone. What is odd is that everyone has my number, obviously, but no one wants to take a chance with giving me solid leads to track this down.
I’m beginning to think that many of these callers are getting the number off of some sort of semi-shady web site, like those that have stolen passwords and serial numbers: “Here’s a hacked conference call number, just call it and enter code XXX to have your free conference call” - or somesuch.
Any ideas out there as to where to go next with this? It is getting really old.
PS I’ve had this family phone number a long time and don’t want to change it.
Have you tried Googling your phone number, both with and without your area code? That might give you some leads, either to sites with it listed, or maybe Google will give it’s “Did you mean…” link to a similar number.
ZenBeam-
Yes, tried that, thank you. Lots of hits on the number without the area code, but none are conference call related, just businesses in other area codes. My own phone/area code combination just turns up offers from .com sites to reverse lookup my own number.
Presumably, people are making some kind of dialing mistake and ending up with your number. I would not expect to find any answers by Googling for your exact number, but perhaps if you did searches with a few numbers transposed, or a repeated number removed…
Absolute-
I’ve asked about that. Some callers immediately claim they dialed a wrong number before hanging up hurriedly. It is possible…but ALL of them dialing a wrong number? Several times a day? What are the odds of that happening?
You could get a new phone number, but keep your old one by porting it over to Google Voice for the one time cost of $20. With Google Voice, you can set it up in a variety of ways to only allow calls from pre-specified numbers to ring through to your new number, or set “Do Not Disturb” to send all calls straight to voicemail whenever you don’t want the phone to ring.
The other option is to try to plead with the next person who calls and tell them they don’t have to tell you anything, but would they please notify the place where they got your number to have it removed. If it is on some nefarious website somewhere, it probably won’t show up in any Google search.
Voltaire-
Thanks for your thoughts. I have literally “begged” numerous callers and some said they would “inform” the person that gave them the number. The earliest person who said that to me was about 6-7 weeks ago, so clearly either they did not pass on the information or it did not help anyway.
As for changing the number - why should I? I’m the one being wronged here. My dander’s up and darn it, I want to keep my number!
/rant mode off/
Actually my wife’s family is overseas and her mom (the 83 year old) has many elderly friends; it would be a major pain to have to tell a great many people (some not even on the internet) about our phone number changing. So “Plan B” is out if I can help it.
Perhaps you didn’t understand the technicals of my suggestion.
If you port your current number over to Google Voice, and get a new number for your home phone, there would be no need to give out the new phone number to anyone. You just set up Google Voice so that the calls that go to your old number get forwarded to your new number. But you can set parameters on *which *calls get forwarded, so that it will only ring through for calls from recognized numbers, or only forward calls (and ring your real phone) when you don’t have it set in “Do Not Disturb” mode. Calls that don’t ring through get sent directly to voicemail, which you can periodically check at your leisure, or even have it set to email all voicemail to you.
One word of advice if you do decide to go this route: Immediately after you initiate the porting of your current number through Google Voice, advise your phone company about what you’re doing, and that you want them to assign a new number to your account after the port goes through.
Voltaire-
Thanks. I got you and in part, frankly, didn’t.
If I get this Google number, don’t I have to give up my present “package” with my internet provider (Cox) which includes phone, internet and cable?
I must be misunderstanding something, I guess. If I have my primary phone service shifted to Google Voice, then Cox will jack up my package fees since they are no longer my primary local and long distance provider…or so I’m thinking. What am I not getting right about your idea?
You’re not getting the fact that all you’re doing from Cox’s perspective is getting a new phone number through them. They will still supply your regular/long-distance phone service, cable, and internet - just under a new phone number. You’ll just be moving your old phone number (not your phone service) over to Google Voice, which only costs you a one-time $20 fee.
I’m certain that there will be no problem with this, but if you want to, just call Cox first and let them know what you’re planning on doing. It’s probably better to do that to make sure it goes through seamlessly on their end. I’ve never dealt with Cox before, so I’m not sure how they’ll handle it, but there’s no reason they should have a problem with it. Just tell them you need to port out your old number, but you want a new phone number to be immediately assigned upon completion of the porting, so that you have a seamless transition without any interruption in phone service. They may even be able to assign the new number immediately, before you even initiate the port through Google, so that you will temporarily have the two phone numbers ringing through to your one phone up until the porting process is complete.
Once it’s complete, your phone service and everything else would still be through Cox; you’d just have your old number “living” at Google, for which there is no cost, except for the one-time $20 porting fee.
My suggestion: Instead of asking where they got the number – which they clearly don’t want to tell you – maybe you could ask which number they were trying to reach, and then you could research that one.
My suggestion is similar to what Absolute posted, except there are so many possible combinations that you might never find the right one.
Have you tried going along with the conference call? Act like you know what’s going on and let things play out. See what happens; if nothing else it might inconvenience the caller enough that they complain to whoever hey are going through.
check your voice mail message. In the past, hackers have broken into voice-mail and re-record the message to something like “Yes…yes…yes…yes…yes…” or tones for accepting call-forwarding. When your voice mail answers, someone calling and charging to a third-person number may be accepted based on the message heard.
So, I took a look at freeconferencecall.com…they make money by providing a local phone number to be conferenced in, and then charge toll fees to the local number. Since a conference probably lasts half-hour to an hour and there may be multiple people connected, the phone company charges a premium to connect to that number. It seems that the person who registered with freeconferencecall.com or whoever has sent out an incorrect number. I doubt the support team at freeconferencecall.com would be able to check all of the active numbers.
Act professional or like an operator when they ask for the conferencing.
You could probably come up with a reason for each of the questions, but all you want to know is what common information is shared between them.
It is probably a good idea to check with your phone provider to make sure that you aren’t getting charged for any of these calls.
That is a good idea, but viscerally I would do what I did when I had an ex harassing me, I got one of the typhoon whistles/london bobby whistles [they are amazingly LOUD] and when it turns out to not be someone you want to talk to, blast their ears with the whistle. Passive aggressive, I know but it feels great <evil grin>
When I become king of telephones, I’m going to require that all new phones come equipped with a slap feature. Just press a button, and a hand comes out of the other person’s phone and slaps them.
What are the odds? That depends on how often the template phone number is called. My office phone number is one digit different from the City Animal Shelter and it doesn’t feel like a normal work day if I don’t get at least one call for them.
