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Anonymous Caller? New Service Says, Not Any More

Anonymous Caller? New Service Says, Not Any More
By Kevin Poulsen February 16, 2009 | 11:43:10 PM
Categories: Hacks and Cracks
A new service set for launch Tuesday allows cellphone users to unmask the Caller ID on blocked incoming calls, obtaining the phone number, and in some cases the name and address, of the no-longer-anonymous caller.
The service, called TrapCall, is offered by New Jersey's TelTech systems, the company behind the controversial SpoofCard Caller ID spoofing service. The new service is likely to be even more controversial — and popular.
"What’s really interesting is that they’ve totally taken the privacy out of Caller ID," says former hacker Kevin Mitnick, who alpha-tested the service.
TrapCall's basic unmasking service is free, and includes the option of blacklisting unwanted callers by phone number. It also allows you to listen to your voicemail over the web. It's currently available to AT&T and T-Mobile subscribers, with support for the other major carriers due within weeks, says TelTech president Meir Cohen.
"It’s not meant for spies, it’s not meant for geeks, it’s not meant for any specific target audience,” Cohen says. "Everybody hates getting blocked calls, and in this day and age they want to know who’s calling, and they want the option of taking the call or not."
Consumers have had the option of shielding their number from display since Caller ID was introduced in the early 1990s, either by dialing *-6-7 before placing a call, or asking their carrier for blanket anonymity for their line. But TrapCall takes advantage of a loophole in Caller ID blocking that’s long benefited corporate phone customers: Namely, calls to toll-free numbers are not blocked, because those calls are paid for by the recipient.
TrapCall instructs new customers to reprogram their cellphones to send all rejected, missed and unanswered calls to TrapCall’s own toll-free number. If the user sees an incoming call with Caller ID blocked, he just presses the button on the phone that would normally send it to voicemail. The call invisibly loops through TelTech’s system, then back to the user’s phone, this time with the caller’s number displayed as the Caller ID.
The caller hears only ringing during this rerouting, which took about six seconds in Wired.com's test with an iPhone on AT&T. Rejecting the call a second time, or failing to answer it, sends it to the user’s standard voicemail.
The service comes as bad news to advocates for domestic violence victims, who fought hard to make free blocking an option in the early days of Caller ID. "I have huge concerns about that,” says Cindy Southworth, director of technology at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, in Washington, D.C. Southworth fears that abusers will use the new service to locate partners fleeing a violent relationship.
In a notable case in 1995, a Texas man named Kevin Roberson shot his ex-girlfriend to death after locating her through the Caller ID device on her roommate's phone line.
The problem is serious, because domestic violence victims who've fled an abusive relationship often have to stay in contact with their abuser by phone, particularly in situations where the former couple share custody of their children,” Southworth says.
"The judge will require that the victim contact the offender to discuss where they’re dropping the children off, for example," says Southworth. "And there’s often court-mandated phone contact between the abusive partner and the victim." In those cases the victims often rely on Caller ID blocking to keep their former partner from knowing where they’re living.
Cohen dismisses that concern, arguing that Caller ID blocking was never secure to begin with. "It’s very simple for somebody to forward a phone to an 800 number in their office, and right there, they’re picking up the phone number of the person who is calling," he says. At least now the false illusion of Caller ID privacy will be dispelled by TrapCall, he adds.
In addition to the free service, branded Fly Trap, a $10-per-month upgrade called Mouse Trap provides human-created transcripts of voicemail messages, and in some cases uses text messaging to send you the name of the caller — information not normally available to wireless customers. Mouse Trap will also send you text messages with the numbers of people who call while your phone was powered off, even if they don’t leave a message.
With the $25-a-month Bear Trap upgrade, you can also automatically record your incoming calls, and get text messages with the billing name and street address of some of your callers, which TelTech says is derived from commercial databases.
TelTech is no stranger to controversy. Its Spoofcard product lets customers send any phone number they want as their Caller ID. Among other things, the spoofing service has been used by thieves to activate stolen credit cards, by hackers to access celebrities’ voicemail boxes, and by telephone hoaxsters to stage a dangerous prank called "swatting," in which they spoof an enemy’s phone number while calling the police with a fake hostage situation. The goal of swatting — realized in hundreds of cases around the country — is to send armed cops bursting into the victim's home.
Cohen’s company has cooperated in law enforcement investigations of Spoofcard abuse, which have led to several prosecutions and convictions. Despite the spoofing-linked crimes, he insists that most Spoofcard users are just privacy-conscious consumers, including celebrities, government officials, private investigators and even spousal abuse victims and shelters.
He also expects his new business will be good for his old one.
“The only way to block your number after this is released is to use Spoofcard,” he says with a laugh.
© 2008 CondéNet, Inc. All rights reserved.

Friends And Family - Add Google411 - They connect calls!

Just an idea for all of those with a "fav 5" or "friends and fmaily" type of feature on your plan.
I would recommend adding Google 411 (free directory assistance) to one of your number slots. the number is: 1-800-466-4411
I know that you cannot use this to call friends, but even if you know a business number, call it through Google's 411 service and since they connect the calls it will not use any of your minutes. You can also say "text me" before it connects you and it will send you a txt message with the name, number and address.
Anyway, just an idea. I added it to our new plan we just switched to and now calling Google 411 is considered an in-network calling so it doesn't use any minutes

crobs808 said:
Just an idea for all of those with a "fav 5" or "friends and fmaily" type of feature on your plan.
I would recommend adding Google 411 (free directory assistance) to one of your number slots. the number is: 1-800-466-4411
I know that you cannot use this to call friends, but even if you know a business number, call it through Google's 411 service and since they connect the calls it will not use any of your minutes. You can also say "text me" before it connects you and it will send you a txt message with the name, number and address.
Anyway, just an idea. I added it to our new plan we just switched to and now calling Google 411 is considered an in-network calling so it doesn't use any minutes
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What country are you talking about for this?

orb3000 said:
What country are you talking about for this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, USA.
I am on Verizon, and I added Google 411 to my list. They go into a "pending" phase for 24 hours before they become active, but it is active now! Can call anyone free pretty much via Google. Will be awesome, hehe.

crobs808 said:
I know that you cannot use this to call friends, but even if you know a business number, call it through Google's 411 service and since they connect the calls it will not use any of your minutes
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, there was an article published a few years ago in 2600: The Hacker Quarterly (Autumn 2007, Issue 24:3, page 32) that explained how easy it was to add businesses to Google 411, and then how to add your friends and family as businesses in order to call them for free. And I'm not sure you need to even put it into your Fave-Five or other like plans, since it's an 800 number, so it should be toll free.
You just add your friends' and family members' numbers as really obscure named businesses with obscure purposes, like archery if there are no archery businesses around you (so that way you are guaranteed to have your "business" show up.
According to the article, the only thing you need to do to register a business is to have a Gmail/Google account, to be able to answer the phone whose number you gave Google 411, and a special PIN number they gave you when you completed part 1 of the registration process (signing up the number and inputting business information).
Then, you wait a while for Google to update their database, and then just call 1-800-GOOG-411 and look up the name of the imaginary obscure business you input, and make free calls to your friends/family. Although it's kind of impractical, for lengthy long distance calls, I guess it could seriously come in handy.
Although I don't know of any reason this wouldn't work now, this article is a few years old, so Google may have changed the process entirely by now, SO THIS ARTICLE MAY NOT BE ACCURATE ANYMORE! And if I missed anything in this post, please feel free to correct me.
@Mods, I don't think this post violates any forum rules, but if it does, PM me and I will be happy to take it down. Thanks,
Dave

Wildcard in caller ID

Is it possible to have wildcard in caller ID?
The questions is, our company has around 100 outgoing lines, all of them look like this: +1(321)123-45xx, the xx means any number from 00~99. Whenever anyone call out from inside company, the PBX system will call out using anyone of available numbers within the range.
So, on the cell phone side, I want to match all above 100 numbers to my company's name (by add it in Contact), that means no matter which number people calling from our company, the Caller ID screen always display our Company name, instead of the number only.
Of course I could enter all those 100 numbers into several Contact entries, all of them with my company name, however, my clients' companies also use same technique, and it's not practical to create multiple contact entries for multiple companies!
Thus, is it possible to introduce some "Wildcard" into the caller ID mechanism? like +1(321)123-45** in the phone entry, then anything number from this range of number will display the same name?
Is there a program or setting for Android?
Thanks in advance!

Not sure of any native way, but you can see if a phonebook app will let you do it. There is an app called phonebook 2.0 which is kinda nice, not sure if it allows it though. This is a good idea for an app though, it could intercept calls and feed it to the incoming call screen, might delay you receiving calls, however.

still no news on this?
I'm very interested in this topic, especially because I am getting quite a few ad-calls from similar numbers.
I am surprised this is not implemented yet.

I am also interested in this. I have been searching around the internet for a solution but I haven't found any solution. Anyone figure out how to add a range of phone numbers to a single contact without having to add every number manually?

Very good idea. Someone solved it?

Virtual mobile phone number app for Australia and other countries

I have spent a considerable amount of time looking for an app that can do this. I have tried around 50 apps from the google store but not many of them can generate an Australian number. I did generate a US number but that app limited the number to 15 minutes which doesn't meet my needs. I want an app that can generate me a permanent Australian mobile number that can receive texts. Especially verification texts when creating an account like a gmail account or any other site that requests a mobile number when creating an account.
The apps I've tried so far either only allow US and surrounding regions or they are very poorly coded and registration/signup cannot be completed.

Have you tried "text now"? It creates a US phone number, that number has been live for months now. Also I suggest you to read their privacy policy.

VOIP For expatriates, multi-country presence, & escaping carrier-bound phone numbers

VOIP For expatriates, multi-country presence, & escaping carrier-bound phone numbers
VOIP for Expatriates
The bottom line turned out to be, there is no good way to have worldwide phone connectivity unless all of the numbers you use are VOIP numbers, and the SIM/wireless provider simply becomes a wireless ISP. This started out an analysis for CallHippo, which I tried out for a month, but it branched out. So far, I've only worked with CallHippo, RingCentral, and Google Voice, and looked at GrassHopper and Phone.com. I've highlighted the other's differences in red. You might be able to somehow use MagicJack in the fit too. One thing to keep in mind is once you leave the SIM or standard PSTN, VOIP often requires 10-digit dialing. That many not matter to you, but it might to those calling you. 7-digit dialing requires a relationship between the PSTN provider and the phone company for your area.
Cost: The only CallHippo plan that makes any sense is the $15.00/$18.00 plan because the number is free, you get 800 incoming, and 200 outgoing minutes after which you pay a penny a minute. Additional numbers are $6.00/mo. from ~200 different countries.
Advantages:
1. The call quality and latency are good.
2. The call recording is good, and without the intrusive nonsense of, "this call is being recorded". It just works, and they back them up as well as your call logs. The advantages of this cannot be understated. Unless you are doing contracts over the phone you don't want that. Most people just want a note taker so you don't need to interfere with the conversation to write things down, especially while driving. It keeps track of time on calls for invoicing purposes. In most cases, it is not possible to know ahead of time if you will need to play it back later or they will be giving you numbers to write down etc.
3. Very flexible with multiple people using the same number at the same time and ring through to other devices, and using devices like extensions. This is different from something such as RingCentral and Phone.com which can use SIP devices because it assigns it a number on the PSTN. With Grasshopper, the device must already have a number in the PSTN to forward the call to, to use it as an extension, which must be Internet accessible, and has it's own voice mail and greetings per extension. Nothing is more feature-rich than RingCentral and it includes MMS, never-busy FAX number, video and call conferencing, and can manage and access everything from a soft-phone on a computer. Phone.com can do nearly as much, but no MMS. A big advantage of systems that can use a SIP device means you do not need to pay for cellular PSTN number to forward to, which requires the additional expense, and something that needs to change every time you change SIMs. With GrassHopper, every time you change SIMs or let your SIM lapse somewhere, you would have to reconfigure because you would lose your number to forward to. You can still forward, and you aren't counting minutes. If the end point for the number will be a cell phone, then CallHippo might make more sense.
4. It only costs $6.00/mo. for each additional line, which can be from ~200 different countries, giving you local presence in multiple countries from anywhere. RingCentral requires a $34.00 plan for the US plus a $44.00 plan plus a 2-year commitment. With Phone.com I can get 1 US line and 1 foreign line for $14.99/mo. by the year or $19.99/mo. by the month. You get 500 minutes and $.039/min. after that or you can buy a bigger plan. If they had Colombia, I'd go with it.
5. The overall combination of good call quality, call recording, flexible use of lines, and local presence in other countries for $6.00/line set it apart. Phone.com also supports a limited number foreign countries at a very practical cost, and would be by far the better way to go IF they support the countries you need.
Disadvantages:
1. Their web site is a confusing hodge-podge of pages that indicating it was built without a plan and pages added to piecemeal to add a capability. Signup was and getting things going was cruel and required multiple chats. RingCentral is very well done. Phone.com seemed like a bit of a put-off because it seems they want you to get a quote. However, it is actually by far the best. A real-live-American will assemble the features you need so it doesn't need to fit anything, and give you a quote where you are getting everything you need and nothing you don't, and at a better price than any other.
2. Competent support will not be available when you need it. This has been true in all but one case. RingCentral's support is good, and Phone.com's is off the charts.
3. CallHippo cannot dial from your Android contacts, nor does it's sync to contacts work. If you enter the numbers into CallHippo's directory by hand they will work but then you cannot use those CallHippo contacts anywhere else. If select a Contacts from Android Contacts to dial, it will return an error that the phone number not valid. This is the problem:
__a. In Android Contacts when you enter a phone number 1234567890 into Android, it will automatically format it to (123) 456-7890.
__b. The CallHippo directory stores contacts like this: 1234567890.
__c. The CallHippo Contacts is designed to work worldwide numbers. For numbers stored as US numbers, it will prepend a 1 and dial 1123456789.
__d. When you select a number from Android Contacts, it receives (123) 456-7890 from Contacts, for the US it prepends a 1 for 1(123) 456-7890 and returns an error that the number is not valid
4. Like most VOIP solutions, it only has SMS, not MMS. RingCentral Supports both.
5. The combination of the poor support, poor website layout, not-well-thought-out contact access
*RingCentral has no problem here nor does Phone.com.
Summary:
- What sets CallHippo apart is the combination of call recording and local presence in multiple countries for only $6.00/mo. That make the penny a minute make sense. Phone.com can do this better if you can live with the much smaller country list they support.
- CallHippo costs $15/mo. for Silver which gives you 800 minutes of free incoming and 200 minutes of free outgoing. If you do the same for RingCentral Essentials it will cost $30/mo. but it will be unlimited free calling in both directions. If you have two people, RingCentral's price goes to $20/mo. each, making it compelling unless you need foreign or multiple lines per person. For that price CallHippo gives you automatic call recording while RingCentral will make you remember to hit the * key unless you get the more expensive packages. If you add $5/mo. to RingCentral you get fax, audio conference and video conference. CallHippo allows you to add numbers for $6.00/mo. including in foreign countries. RingCentral only works with US numbers and it would cost another full monthly service charge. Google Voice is free, but it is only a US number and you must give them a US number for confirmation. I'm not sure if you will need a confirmation number at any point in the future but I do know that if the number is no longer available, the service does not stop. Call recording for inbound calls only and does an announcement. This enables free calls to from anywhere to anywhere in the US for free, and makes you reachable from anywhere in the US. This does not enable free local calling to and from a foreign country from anywhere. The way I can see this working is if you don't care about call recording, and you got a VOIP number in the foreign country. Otherwise, when you were out of country, you would not be able to be directly contacted from that country, and you would have multiple VOIP provider apps. You hear a lot about GrassHopper. It is more feature-rich than CallHippo, but the problem is it is more of a forwarding service. That means you need to have a number to forward to that you are maintaining from another service. Thus, GrassHopper's fit is for a US-based business using other phones as extensions. It doesn't do call recording, every time you change SIMs the number you forward to would have to change, and anything foreign would be at long distance rates. It is clearly not a fit for international use. Phone.com makes a ton of sense if their limited non-US country list works for you.
- CallHippo's poor website layout, poor support, and not having something as basic as dialing from Contacts working, indicates an amateur operation. RingCentral and Phone.com excel in all of these categories and even sharing a contact list. Not being able to dial from you Contact list? People's expectations of a dialer goes beyond that. They expect to be able to paste a number in from a web page and have it dial.
- I believe CallHippo has a lot of potential but it seems like it's in the alpha stage. Will it even exist tomorrow, and what happens to your ported numbers then? The attraction is there isn't anything with this level of functionality and price for doing frequent coordination in multiple countries.
- Defining the market for this service is a bit of a challenge. As a VOIP IP PBX system, it is much more limited than most. It doesn't work with regular SIP hardware for inside of an office. If you use your cell phone as your desk phone, you still cannot share a company telephone directory, nor can you use its Contacts to dial from because their sync does not make the telephone numbers available in a format that CallHippo can use, nor is there any other way to import or export Contacts. It cannot sanitize numbers copied from web pages. Ideally, as an expatriate, you want your domestic and foreign numbers to be VOIP numbers so when you switch SIMs, nothing changes because the wireless provider does not host your number. He is simply providing Internet access for the numbers. CallHippo's main detractors are the Contact list situation, and no MMS support. So it seems like the only market fits for CallHippo are for a single expatriate, or a one-man business that needs local presence to call other businesses in foreign countries.