home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!cleveland.Freenet.Edu!cs737
- From: cs737@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John B. Baron)
- Newsgroups: alt.privacy
- Subject: Re: Op-ed piece on telephone Caller ID
- Date: 22 Jan 1993 05:32:53 GMT
- Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
- Lines: 41
- Message-ID: <1jo0u5INN35a@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu
-
-
- mcover@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark Coverdill) writes:
-
- > Get *two* phone lines.
-
- > Put an answering machine on the first line. This number will get
- > published in the telco book. Use it to call business's, etc that can
- > get your number anyway just by looking in the book or using ANI.
- ^^^
- What is ANI?
-
- > Give out the second line's number to family and friends. It will not
- > be published in the telco book unless you specifically request it.
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- Did you *specifically request* that your *first* number be published?
- The way I remember, one has to pay *extra* to have a number *unlisted*,
- whether it is your first line of your tenth.
-
- > This may be a bit more expensive solution (but you have to pay for Caller
- > ID too) but I tend to tie up the phone line....
- > It is worth it to avoid unwanted calls.
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- Do you mean to say that telemarketers won't just dial in sequence every
- number with a given prefix? C'mon. They can just dial sequentially until
- the end of time. If you told me just the name of the city in which you live,
- I could call you up on your unlisted number. How? I just look in the front
- of the phone book for the prefix key. That's where they list which cities
- have which prefix (the first three digits of your seven-digit phone number).
- I find out that say, Akron has the prefix of say, 567, and start dialing.
- 567-0000, 567-0001, 567-0002 and so on. I bet that by 567-9999, I'd find
- you. And if you weren't home, I could always just save that number on my
- database to try to nag you again later. Yes, cities can have more than one
- prefix. But if I'm a telemarketing blood-sucker, that'd just give me all
- the more numbers to call to disturb people! :-)
-
- If having an unlisted phone number could stop telemarketers from dialing us,
- I bet a good many fellow telemarketer haters would not have written in to
- share our frustration re: telemarketing leeches.
-
- John
-