All your caller ID are belong to
us
The good old days of ringing people up anonymously and pretending you
are someone else could be a thing of the past [what a strange life you
lead.ed]
TrapCall, which is being peddled by TelTech Systems, reveals the
phone numbers of, and in some cases the names and addresses, of blocked Caller
IDs. TelTech is the outfit which came up with SpoofCard, an Internet calling
card service that allows users to place calls in which originating caller
numbers appear to be something completely different. Great days were to be had
pretending to be the White House or Number 10 Downing Street.
Mobile phone
users have long been able to shield their originating number from display by
dialling *67 before placing a call. Since mobiles which called 800-numbers were
immune to this TrapCall takes advantage of the hole.
Punters have to
reprogram their phones to send all rejected, missed, and unanswered calls to
TrapCall. The user presses a button on the handset that is normally used to
send the call to voicemail. The call is then rerouted to TrapCall's toll-free
line, where the caller's information is obtained and then sent back to the
original call's recipient. It is supposed to take six seconds and the caller
just listens to a normal dial tone.
The downside is that victims of domestic
abuse could reveal their addresses if they ever call their abuser. This
sometimes happens when the victim and abuser have joint custody of the kids.