Just got a phone call for Mrs Blather who was not here. When he found out, the caller said they’d call back. Something seemed fishy so I dialed *69. The phone number I got back was 202 000-0000. The area code is for Washington DC. Is this some weird spook thing where they are masking the phone number?
I think a lot of PBX’s mask the outgoing number now, or substitute a generic company number for the real one. The number you got sounds like someone forgot to initialize the number to use when programming the PBX when they got it.
Too bad, I was hoping the NSA was listening in.
Nah. The NSA is in Maryland, not DC. They’d have a 301 or 410 area code.
Dunno - could be a bit of McBeanery by the telco; seems like they tend to alternate repeatedly between selling you a means to avoid unwanted calls, then turning around and selling the unwanted callers a means to defeat it.
When I receive phonecalls where the caller is using SkypeOut , I generally get the 000-0000 business. Can’t remember the area code, though.
I had a collections agency call me from “213-000-0000”.
Oddly, I could hear them, but they couldn’t hear me.
Collections people pretty much never call from a “real” number. Heck, I had one caller like that who did… I added him to my cell phone’s CONTACTS list, then made his ring “silent”.