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Strange Numbers on Caller ID?
boohiss asks: "I've been getting a lot of calls on my cell phone from '+001819'. I haven't answered them, of course. But what is this number? I've found some various explanations here and there, but nothing conclusive. There's also the story on Snopes about the famed 809 long distance scam, which may or may not be what this is. Could it be some form of cell phone spam that isn't compatible with my phone? Does anyone else get these calls, and has anyone figured out what they are?" If anyone is unfortunate enough to fall for one of these, what options do they have in terms of damage control?
When my sister was working at the district attorney office, if she called out house from there, the caller ID showed up as "out of area", but if she called our cell phones it showed up as ( I think ) 0393.
Always the same number, so we knew who it was, but it was odd.
Perhaps your carrier isn't receiving the caller ID info, and your carrier is just sticking some number on there to indicate that.
819 QC -5 NW Quebec: Trois Rivieres
The caller's probably from the US, where they have this bizarre system were the recipient of a mobile phone call pays.
+ in a phone number usually indicates an international number (you're supposed to dial your international call prefix plus the number, you see) but there are no country codes beginning with 0. Assuming that, again, he's in the US and the + is in fact erroneous, 001819 would dial a number in Sherbooke, Quebec, Canada.
What you are experiencing is someone calling you through a carrier that does not properly populate the CLI and ANI fields in the SS7 (or ISDN) message to the terminating carrier.
This isn't anything scamy at all, and nothing for you to worry about. All this means is that someone is using some cheap ass long distance to call you... maybe from a prepaid phone card or a VoIP-to-POTS service. Its very easy to not set this up correctly if you are using some crap switching platform like NACT STX, and if the carrier is small enough to be under the radar, they probably aren't filing the PIU forms anyway so they don't give a shit about the tax penalities for not sending ANI.
Your cell phone provider will treat this call the same way it treats all incoming calls. Most likely that means it will just charge you at your normal airtime rate.
According to http://decoder.americom.com/cgi-bin/decoder.cgi it might be:
I have a PRI (23 voice channels) with a national carrier and manage our phone system. I can set my CLI (caller id) to anything I want like 5551212 . I _cannot_ set my ANI (the real billable phone number) though. You cannot see ANI on your phone unless you have a very special agreement with the phone carrier (e.g. 800 numbers)
Spoofing ANI and CLI only requires that you have an oob signaling link to your upstream carrier. Every upstream carrier is going to populate whatever the one before them had in the message for ANI and CLI. You can probably do that with any old ISDN or T1 without much trouble.
If you just have a regular DS0 land line, its a bit different. ANI and CLI are transmitted out of band, so you can't reall effect that. The terminating switch will have the same ANI and CLI that your originating switch trasmitted in the SS7 message. However, the "caller id" information (taken from the CLI field) is transmitted in band from the terminating switch to the receiving party's handset... and this is very easy to spoof. Once you are connected, you can send your own in band "caller id" signal which will be picked up by the receiving part's handset. You can probably do it with sound card.
Yes. Cellular works a bit differently in the US. You are charged for both incoming and outcoming calls.
On the other hand, the calling party does -NOT- pay more for calling a cellular than a landline. In most other countries, cellular has a special city code that is billed at a higher rate. Here in the US you can port any number to cell or landline, so its not usually possible for the calling party to know he is calling a cell.
I would agree with the subject line; I'm with Rogers in Canada and when I use their web based text messaging system to send a message to my wife's cell phone, also on Rogers, it shows up as a + 'number' and not an actual number I can return a call to.
I should mention a few things about Rogers, you get 2500 incoming text messages a month, but have to pay to send one from your cell. They farmed out their web based system for sending text messages to ZimSMS.com probably because they didn't want to deal with cell Spam (?Spim?) - and ever since, the delay in sending and receiving computer to cell messages has become outragous (4 or more hours on weekdays) [under Rogers control it never took longer than 30 minutes - and most of the time messages would be received within 5 minutes]. Hell the delay was so minimal that I had a perl script use the Rogers site to send my cell weather updates.
In-band = information transmitted the same way your data (or voice in this case) is. In an analog phone network, in-band signalling and control is done with things like audible tones and voltage changes.
Out-of-band = signalling and control that happens by some other means outside your data (voice) link. For instance with an ISDN line, the out-of-band signalling is on the D channel, whereas the voice/data are on the B channels.
CLI/ANI info, posted from the first hit of a google search:
CLI , ANI
Calling Line Identification , Automatic Number Identification
CLI = ANI
A service available on digital phone networks that tells the person being called which number is calling them.
The central office equipment identifies the phone number of the caller, enabling information about the caller to be sent along with the call itself. (Osicom)
The providing of the Directory Number from which a terminating call has originated ( NI )
A service available on digital phone networks that tells the person being called which number is calling them.
The central office equipment identifies the phone number of the caller, enabling information about the caller to be sent along with the call itself. ( WorldCom )
At a minimum, the calling line identification includes a single calling party number; it may also include a second calling party number, a calling party subaddress, and redirecting number information.
Calling line identification may not include any calling party number due to interworking, or because of an interaction with the CLIR supplementary service. ( TG )
11*43+456^2
Don't ignore the possibility that it's your own equipment malfunctioning. I was getting the weirdest junk on caller ID a couple months ago, until I figured out that the batteries in my caller ID display had died...
This is true for the most part, but it can't be relied upon for billing purposes. Every NPANXX is associated with an OCN, but the OCN no longer owns the number. The biggest problem here is not cellular, which as the parent said is usually all together in one area code. What is much merkier is trying to identify if you are calling a number attached to a RBOC or a CLEC. Its very common now to change your local service provider for your landline. LNP for cellular is a new development.
Back in the old days you could just do a lookup of the NPANXX in the LERG to determine who the final terminating carrier is. But now, even though a NPANXX is associated with an OCN, you can't rely on that.
However, thanks to SS7's national roll out in '92, you can now dip the NPAC database to determine which LEC you are sending the call to.
Reference Guide for non-telecom nerds:
NPANXX ~ The area code and exchange. i.e. from 617-333-3456, the NPANXX is 617/333.
OCN ~ Operating Company Number. This is a reference number that identifies a particular local service provider. For instance, Pacific Bell (I believe) is 9147. Cellular providers and CLECs have their own OCN numbers as well.
LERG ~ Local Exchange Routing Guide. This is a database published in monthly updates by Telcordia
on a CD-ROM that shows (amoung other things) which OCN is associated with which NPANXX. It also shows the geographical coordinates of each NPANXX (for those who bill calls by mile), ratecenters (local calling areas), and about 2 dozen other things.
LEC ~ Local Exchange Carrier. This is the company who's switch is connected via copper wire to your handset. This can also be a cellular company. In the United States, a LEC originates and terminates every call, though there may be 1 or more Interexchange carriers (IXCs) in the middle.
CLEC ~ Competitive Local Exchange Carrier. This is a LEC that wasn't part of the Bell Breakup, but uses parts of the local bell company's network and systems to get to that last mile customer. For instance, your cable company is a CLEC if it offers local phone service.
RBOC ~ Regional Bell Operating Company. This is a company born out of the Bell Breakup. i.e. Verizon, Qwest, BellSouth, SBC, etc.
LNP ~ Local Number Portability. This is taking a local phone number (whether it originally belong to a cell phone or a landline is now irrelevant), and PORTING it to another local exchange carrier's network. This allows a customer to keep his phone number but change providers.
SS7 ~ A very reliable and complex out of band signaling system now used in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and other developed parts of the world. SS7 has redundancies all over the place, allows for dipping external databases (for instance to identify a ported local number or where to route an 800 number), and most importantly, provides a continuous stream of data between every switch along the call path. This means that the terminating switch at the end of the last call leg has the call setup information before it gets the call (faster call setup = connect to your party faster), and it also means that the first switch in route will know that the 6th switch in route is having problems before it sends the call there, so it can reroute the call somewhere else.
NPAC ~ World Zone 1's database of what number belongs to what LEC-- i.e. to identify ported numbers.
World Zone 1 ~ All the countries you dial 1+area code+number for. US, Canada, Guam, some carribean islands.