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July 25th, 2006 Wrong Number? I’m still at work checking a massive drive on our fileserver and the phone rang. It’s about 8:30pm, so it’s just me. We’re TOTALLY closed for business. But I pick up anyway.
The voice on the other end was clearly a recording. We don’t have caller ID on individual phones here, so I have no idea what the number was. So why would someone set up a recording to call a bunch of numbers, only have the recording tell the person upon picking up that they apparently got a wrong number? Back in the day of modems, wardialing - calling up random numbers looking for modem tones - was a fairly popular sport. This was popularized in the movie “War Games” as a method for finding and, potentially, hacking private networks. If you ever received a phone call that immediately hung up upon you answering, you may have been wardialed. So is this some polite new form of that? Telemarketers confirming that the numbers on are their lists are valid (a la spammers)? Special voice recognition technology that knew I wasn’t the spy they were looking for and, therefore, decided to try someone else? Anyone with answers - I’d appreciate one. I’m guessing it’s the telemarketer thing, but I’m curious. |
5 Responses to “Wrong Number?”Care to comment?You must be logged in to post a comment. |
It’s performance art! (sort of.
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Rob!
Okay, I think I may have an answer to this here conundrum:
http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/wrongnumberscam.htm
What do you think?
-Caz
I have been called four times in the last two days. When I answer my phone, a woman’s voice simply says: “I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number.” It’s totally annoying and I am tempted not to answer the phone at all to see if they will leave a message.
I still have no answer to this one. The link Caz posted above goes to an FTC warning about stock tips “accidentally” recorded on your answering machine. I think I may have been right initially - that it’s telemarketers confirming that the numbers in their list are valid so that, when they resell them, they can say they’re hot lines.
Scummy.
What you have is a telmarketing firm using a new technique. The point is to leave a message, they do not want to talk to someone just leave a message for you to call back. The system reconginizes when a human talks that it is not an answere machine so it hangs up automatically. Once they get your number in the system it keeps calling trying to get the answer machine. Principle behind it is that it is common for people to view their call ID and not answer. Getting your answer machine lets them call large blocks of people without being idtentified.