Today I got a call on my cell phone from a very strange number: +1 33825933151. Yes, that’s one too many digits to be a standard US phone number. The caller ID just listed the caller as “United States”. It rang twice and then hung up. I assume it was some kind of scam call, but what’s up with the strange number?
Also, I accidentally swiped right on the missed call notification, which on the iPhone automatically calls the number back. I immediately hung up, hopefully before the call went through. I’ve heard some scammers will call and hang up in order to trick people into calling some number that will result in charges on their phone bill (because some people just call back every missed call they get). I home that isn’t what I did.
It’s my understanding that scammers can put any number they want in there. Sometimes I get calls from “41853” or something similar. I don’t answer any calls from numbers that aren’t in my contacts already.
I just smile at the ones that are [myAC]-[myPrefix]-[fourRandomDigits]. I don’t know anyone with my area code and prefix combination* but I suppose there are enough who do and pick it up in case it’s Mother calling to make it worth while.
*Not even DesertRoomie and our cell numbers are on the same account and activated at the same time.
Weirdly, I had a call at 1:05am today from the same number. Didn’t answer it of course. And googling the number results in this thread as the number one result, but also results in one of those robocall reporting pages where about fifty other people reported calls from that number.
I’m surprised they even bother trying that junk. in a day where damn near everyone is using mobile phones, the notion of two people having the same exchange/prefix being “local” to each other is obsolete.
I got a voice mail on my work phone the other day, sent with HIGH PRIORITY!
The caller was from Anchorage Alaska and launched into a rant about how he and his family were being persecuted by the CIA and listed all the illegalities one by one. I don’t know how my work number wound up on his contact list. Maybe Snopes has something about it.
Interesting. When I googled it yesterday I got absolutely no results, which is partly why I started this thread. I guess other people must have reported calls from that number since then.
Edit: Oh, actually I do get results if I leave off the +1.
I have VoIP. There’s an entry in my settings where I can put in the number I want to show up on caller ID. It doesn’t have to the same as out number. It doesn’t have to look like a normal number.
It’s just that easy to fake a number. It’s a lot like return addresses on envelopes.
My concern actually was that maybe the scam was that if someone blindly calls the number back they get a recording like “Press 1 to consent to having an exorbitant charge added to your bill”, and the phone goes ahead and sends a 1 because of the extra digit in the callback number. Although I honestly don’t know if phones would handle the extra digit that way or not.
I know that in 1991, a hotel (Holiday Inn?) in Evanston, IL, told me that their number was 1+area code+ evanston. When I pointed out that that was too many digits, the desk clerk told me the extra digit was ignored. I have no idea if that is still true.
I still hear ads in the radio with phone number with too many digits, so I believe that is still true. See: the obnoxious Kars 4 Kids. It sounds like the latest version of the jingle drops the final “s,” but that’s still one too many digits.
I’ve recieved many calls from a known caller with an extra digit. They were calling out with a calling card from an extension that wasn’t allowed inbound calls. It always showed up as +18AAA-EEE-XXXX
I have heard of a “one ring” scam where someone calls, lets it ring once, and hopes you’ll call back. It turns out to be one of those numbers where you get billed for calling it. But the number you have makes no sense as a U.S. number. Without the initial 1 I would have said it’s from France.
As others have stated, it’s trivially easy to spoof caller ID. That being said, I have received (legit) calls from other countries, mainly India, that look very off because they don’t use the same 10-digit format that we do.
Depends. Any extra digits entered before the call picks up on the other side are just ignored with tone dialing*. The exception is a spacer like a comma. A comma is a 3(?) second delay.
I had my cell programmed to check my work voice mail. 10-digit #, comma-comma, 1, comma, mailbox #, comma, password #. When I pressed the saved # for my work’s VM retrieval it would call in, put in my user name (number) & password, all with appropriate pauses. The next button I had to press was “1 to listen to new messages”.
with old fashioned pulse/rotary phone dialing, extra #s would terminate the call.
When I moved across the country, I thought having a cellphone with a remote area code was a bug. Now I realize it’s a feature. It’s possible that I might get a valid phone call from an unknown number in the area code where I live; but vanishingly unlikely that I’d ever get a valid call from an unknown number in the area code of my phone number. So my phone is just set up to trash any unknown numbers from the same area code as my phone. It definitely cuts down on spam.
Yes but those extra digits are not transmitted as caller id data. The switch just pays attention to enough digits to complete a call and the rest of it is “played back” to the system that answers the call.