18 Jun
2004
18 Jun
'04
1:56 p.m.
> > > 83 spammers have been tracked down and
terminated with molten iron,
> snopes.com is good for many kinds of things, but she is a sucker
> on certain technology issues. What kind of phone system
> does 9 0 # work on?
On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
What entry is that?
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/jailcall.htm
That configuration probably only worked on a specific
brand of phone
system, and only if configured to allow any user to trunk transfer an
outside caller to an outbound trunk. The # would (I assume) tell the
phone system to outdial the 0 and not wait for any further digits.
As stated, it won't work on ANY system.
What it's based on is:
1. get the recipient to enable "three way calling" (often by a hook flash)
2. get the recipient to dial 9 for an outside line
3. get the recipient to connect with an operator
4. get the recipient to get off the three way call
Steps 1 and 4 are missing from the corrupted bogus story,
rendering it completely useless. TPC (The Phone Company)
is aware that the instructions are WRONG, but they don't
want to correct the details "for security reasons".
Barbara doesn't understand what's wrong with it.
It's stated that way to make it sound like some bizarre
incomprehsnsible to mortals thechnological system,
but it's really nothing more that social engineering.
An easier way to do the exact same scam is to call
Microsoft, and say, "Hi, this is Bill Gates. I'm
at Starbucks and my cell battery is dead, so I have
to use the payphone. Would you connect me to an
outside line?"
She also says that the WARNING! of the 809 scam (that
people get cheated out of THOUSANDS of dollars,
by being fooled into returning calls to Dial-a-porn
in the virgin islands) is true, inspite of being
aware that the most that ANYBODY has ever lost to
that scam was on the order of $10.
Besides,
it's really true! A friend of a friend lived next to a spammer,
and some biker dude came and burned him to death!
Yeah, I heard he was hopped up
on massive doses of V!@6RA. I don't even
want to talk about what he did to the corpse!