The phone rings the other night so I pick it up, and a computer voice answers “Sor-ry, wrong num-ber” and hangs up. Two minutes later, an irate man calls insisting to know who i am and why my number is on his phone if I didn’t call him.
Hadn’t made any calls in a few hours, and nobody else was home. Is there a way for somebody to call someone else and have my phone number show up? If they are able to do that, can they be making calls on my account?
There’s a way for Mr. Smith to call Mr. Jones and leave your phone number on Mr. Jones’ answering machine. It’s called “incompetence”, as in “the incompetent boob said the wrong number into the machine”. 
According to every spy movie I ever saw, there are ways to fiddle caller ID so that Mr. Smith can call Mr. Jones and have Mr. Green’s phone number show up on Mr. Jones’ caller ID. However, that’s just in the movies…
I think…
[sub]is my computer beeping, or is that just the Gray Men?[/sub]
You only think that you had not made any calls.
Looks like as we approach Halloween, you are gradually being turned into an undead.
[deep chilling voice]BwaaaHaaaaHaaaaHaaaaHaaaaaaaaaa![/deep chilling voice]
Seriously, call the phone company and keep notes.
If somebody really wants to mess with you, that someone could walk up to your house and make a phone call. On most houses, there’s an outlet on the outside of the house that the phone company uses to determine whether a problem in phone service lies in their lines or on yours. That outlet is a perfectly good phone connection that can be used just as well as your phone.
Of course, you probably already knew that. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a way to get an arbitrary number to show up on someone’s caller-id box. That said, you probably have to enter some obscure code to set it up.
Here’s a thought – maybe the irate man is the one who first called you with the synthesized voice. THEN he called you pretending to be angry that you called him. Granted, he’d have to be pretty damned bored, but, as I said, it’s a thought.
I don’t know about processes specifically designed to fool caller IDs, but I know it’s possible using a cell phone.
What follows applies to my cell phone and definitely not all cell phones, but I’m guessing there are similar options on others.
Having gone through the programming setup menus on my cellphone, I came across two options among others-- “Account Information” (which was set up to my phone number, say 8885551234, and my name) and “Display Information” (which was also set to 8885551234 and my name). I assume the account number is linked to contacting the cellular service, because when I altered that I got nothing. Changing the display number, however, resulted in calls being successfully placed, but appearing on caller IDs as what I specified. For example, I would call my home after setting the display information to “1234567890” and “Bob Smith” and that would display on the caller ID.
Maybe that’s what happened?
I’ve had a similar, if not same problem in the past.
I’d get a call from someone a did not know and had not called asking me (thanks to his caller ID) why I had called and what I wanted.
Bell Canada informed me that certain cordless phones (not cells) have this problem of dialing random numbers.
Don’t know how accurate it was, but after disconnecting the cordless phone, which was pretty old, I never had this problem again.
I think it’s easy to mistakenly misdirect call forwarding.
The few times I’ve tried to use it people said they got wrong numbers after dialing mine and hearing it switch over.
If it was’t part of a “feature package” deal, I never would have ordered it. It seems more error prone than useful.
What a wonderfully evil way to stalk someone, and piss off someone else you may not like at the same time. Thanks for the info, but I will take Muffin’s advice and call the phone company.
Maybe your girlfriend is married.
And her suspicious husband hit the redial button.
Or maybe the angry man just dialled the wrong number - your number wasn’t on his caller ID at all.