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.
“Hello?”
[Click] “I’m sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number.” [Click]
“Whuh?”
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.
It’s performance art! (sort of.
)
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
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.