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Emails, Phones, and Fear

Submitted by Ken Watts on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 18:41

I GOT ANOTHER email today.

This one was a warning about a scam involving telephones.

It made me think about the whole question of forwarded emails, where they come from, and just how dangerous they are—or aren't.

The email in question is particularly interesting because there's nothing overtly political about it. It's titled 90# on your phone:


I dialed '0', to check this out, asked the operator, who confirmed that this was correct
so please pass it on . . . (l also checked out Snopes.com. This is true, and also applies to cell phones!)

PASS ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW

I received a telephone call last evening from an individual identifying himself as an AT&T Service Technician (could also be Telus) who was conducting a test on the telephone lines. He stated that to complete the test I should touch nine(9), zero(0), the pound sign (#), and then hang up. Luckily, I was suspicious and refused.
Upon contacting the telephone company, I was informed that by pushing 90#, you give the requesting individual full access to your telephone line, which enables them to place long distance calls billed to your home phone number.

I was further informed that this scam has been originating from many local jails/prisons DO NOT press 90# for ANYONE.

The GTE Security Department requested that I share this information with EVERYONE I KNOW.
After checking with Verizon they also said it was true, so do not dial 90# for anyone !!!!! PLEASE HIT THAT FORWARD BUTTON AND PASS THIS ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!

At first glance, I was inclined to think it was just another piece of loose paranoia, floating around in the space-time continuum.

Then I noticed four things:

  1. It cites way too many authorities.

    It implies that Snopes verifies the story. It says that the local operator confirmed it. It says that the writer then checked with Verizon, who also said it was true. And it claims that the GTE Security Department requested that the writer tell everyone.

    This seemed like a lot of verification. I, personally, would have taken my phone company's word for it.
  2. The link to Snopes was a link to the main page, not the article on this topic.

    This also smelled funny.

    If the writer had really gone to Snopes to verify his claim, wouldn't it be easy to simply cut and paste the link to that page?

    Unless he didn't want us to check it out...

To be continued...