SCAMMERS !

[ian16th]

I didn't take up the offer. I thought that it might be a little too expensive.

[Pontius Navigator]

Seriously though, the spammers seem to send shed loads of crap in burst s. I have passed them all on. Today none.

[Dushan]

So you got caught too!
As a matter of interest, I don't have a Faecesbook account and never have.

I got a few of these, as did my wife. The PW was an old one, long since, changed.

[OFSO]

My second and oldest phone received an SMS about Income Tax from HMRC yesterday. How clever of HMRC being able to do that when they don't even have the phone number.........

[Dushan]

You may "think" that they don’t have your number. They have everyone's number.

[OFSO]

Even a burner card ? A scam, anyway....

[Pontius Navigator]

OFSO, I think Dushan might mean as in the lottery. Only you have to be in it for them to Win it. It could be you

[OFSO]

When I were a lad in the GPO, back in the 1960s, devices called Routiners, big mechanical things, would routinely ring random phone numbers iovernight to test the line, closing before the first ring pulse reached the other end. Hence unlisted numbers would also be tested if one came up. No such thing as an invisible phone number.

You win first prize in the lottery of life, being born English.....

[Pontius Navigator]

OFSO, deviating as you do, in the 50s, when we got a phone, it was said you should only pick up the phone between rings and not when it was ringing, old wives tale?

Many years later, 2000, I was in a house in India when the phone rang. She sat by the phone, hand poised, and grabbed it as soon as the ring stopped.

Conversely, before call menus were common, I remember ringing Lloyds Bank. As soon as you had taped in the number this disembodied voice would answer "hello". It caught so many people off guard they had to build on a delay.

[G-CPTN]

I used to know a number to dial then replace the handset and the 'phone would ring - an automatic call-back that tested the circuit to and from the exchange.

[OFSO]

Ring voltage was 90v. Not many people know that. Up a pole in the rain, crimping the copper wires (no insulation), you could get quite a belt. Did not happen often which is why, when it did, it was shocking.

[Pontius Navigator]

OFSO, sounds like the answer, bell ring 90v.

[ian16th]

Ring voltage was 90v. Not many people know that. Up a pole in the rain, crimping the copper wires (no insulation), you could get quite a belt. Did not happen often which is why, when it did, it was shocking.

The difference between the UK 'Burr-Burr' and the US 'Burr' could confuse the hell out of some auto answering devices.

Not to mention PABX's that had direct inward dialing to extensions, and created single rings for internal calls, and double rings for direct incoming ones, but the 'created' ring indicate was of none standard duration.

[ribrash]

I used to know a number to dial then replace the handset and the 'phone would ring - an automatic call-back that tested the circuit to and from the exchange.

We did that when we were kids.Drove our Mum crackers as we hid behind the settee.

[G-CPTN]

I used to know a number to dial then replace the handset and the 'phone would ring - an automatic call-back that tested the circuit to and from the exchange.

We did that when we were kids.Drove our Mum crackers as we hid behind the settee.

Does it still work? I don't remember the number.

[Capetonian]

175 and the last 4 digits of your number, when I were a lad.

Another thing we used to do from work was phone the estate agency across the road, as we could clearly see the people in their. When one of the staff answered the phone we would pretend to be a 'phone technician and tell the person to follow the cable that came out of the back of the phone into where it went into the wall. Once they done that, we'd tell them that there wasn't enough cable and could they start pushing it back in!

Below is something on the subject of phone messing around that I have posted before, this is a cut/paste :

I used to work for a travel company where our telephone system gave us a lot of fun.

It was the old 'key and lamp' type, with a light and a switch corresponding to each line. The light flashed when a call came in and you pulled down the switch to take the call. I discovered that if you pulled down two switches at the same time you could connect together two external calls and listen in to the ensuing conversation. Evil thoughts went through my mind when I realised the possibilities that this opened up. Timing was critical when you dialled two numbers and hoped that they both answered simultaneously.
"Good morning, British Rail Euston seat reservations"
"Good morning, British Rail Victoria seat reservations"
"Can I 'elp you?"
"This is British Rail Victoria"
"No, this is British Rail Euston"
"No it isn't, we're Victoria seats"
"Can I 'elp you?"
"Well you rang me ....."
"No I didn't, you rang me, you came up on my line 84"
"No, you came up on my line 16"
"What did you want anyway then ...."
"Nothing, you rang me ......"

We rang El Al and Egypt Air (this was when there were active hostilities between the two countries), we rang husbands and wives, we called a famous rock star and his estranged wife who had both been clients ......

I rang my mother and my grandmother who began speaking to each other quite normally until one asked the other:
"Anyway what did you ring for?"
"No, you rang me."
"You rang me, I was outside cutting roses and I had to come in to answer the 'phone."
"I was in the bath and I had to get out, I'm standing here dripping wet...."
They came to the conclusion that one or the other was going barmy, and I will always remember battling to keep a straight face when my mother told me how 'a very strange thing happened today'.

We kept up this campaign unrelentingly for days until a fed up British Rail booking clerk said :" ..... 'ere, this keeps 'appening .... it's 'appened abaht five times today, I'm going to ring the Post Office I am, you see if I don't." We left it alone for a while after that.

One morning at about 10 o'clock as we were quietly enjoying our fourth or fifth cup of tea of the day, a lamp that didn't correspond with any of our lines began to flash. I answered with 'hello'.
"Good morning, is that the Shilalipi restaurant?".
"Sorry, wrong number" I said instinctively, before remembering that the Shilalipi (otherwise known as the *sh*t* and Leap) was the Indian restaurant next door to us whose reeking back yard full of rotting animal parts too vile even for them to use had caused us to call the local Health Department just the day before. I pulled down the key and sure enough there was a line.

Before long, another call came in. "Good morning, Shilalipi", I replied in my best Peter Sellers accent. It was the orders clerk for an internationally known carbonated drink firm requesting our weekly order.

"Oh dear," I said : "goodness gracious me. My brother is normally doing these orderings and he is not here today. How many did we order last week?"

"10 cases," she said.

"Well well, we are very busy this week and we ran out last week and we are expecting a lot of people so we will have 50 this week."

Late in the afternoon a massive articulated lorry blocked the street as case after case of Coca Cola was unloaded and piled up in front of the door of the still closed restaurant.

[ExSp33db1rd]

Not really a scam, but .... I once learned that one started a number with a - I think ? - a 3 digit "area" number that was dedicated to one's local exchange, so that if one started a number with one's own "area" number then it was only a local call, but anything else became a Toll call, don't press me, can't remember the detail now, but I stopped at every town and village from Heathrow to my then Dorset home, and noted the number to call the "next" place as a local call, then when I got home I rang them all in sequence, having by then something like a 24 digit number that would allow me to call Heathrow as a local call, instead of having to make what was then an expensive toll call ! Seemed to work until I ended up having to add the Heathrow number I needed, which started with a O, and that broke the chain. Foiled again. But it sounded like a good idea at the time !

[Pontius Navigator]

Once told by a policeman in the East end that they had a number to ring for a free time check or similar, something like WESTCO, never had the nerve to try, I was about 9 or 10 at the time.

[Pontius Navigator]

I know as late as 1970 some bright spark hacked into the MOD, bounced into Akrotiri, into sqn ldr ops office, then to Tehran. As the last hop was mil-civ the bill landed in Akrotiri.

First person in the star chamber was Slops, then everyone else who had access. Then they discovered the hack.

The 'Level 9' system enabled direct dial mil-civ so to stop such unauthorised access a time lock could be added but that's another story.

[Hydromet]

There was a time when it was possible to call a public phone box. I had just finished making a call when the adjacent box rang. Out of curiosity, I answered it and an English accented operator asked if I'd accept a reverse charge call from a London number. Just as I was about to accept, a young lady dashed in and said "That will be for me!". It seems that her boyfriend booked a reverse charge call to the box and the UK operator just dialled straight to it.

Where I worked we had one of the old switchboards as described by Capetonian. To get an outside line, you had to dial 0, a light would go on and the switchboard operator would give you a line. One day when I had Idle hands, I organised everyone on our floor - about 20 people - to dial 0 at once. The operator said just one word - loudly.