Hacked fridge

[Dean Hoffman]

From Business Insider:

Hackers broke into some home gadgets then sent 3/4 million malicious emails.

[micky]

I've told this story here once, but maybe some of you missed it.

I worked at a major corporation, and any of us, even contractors, could make long distance calls from the phones, any phone I think. The company had branches in other cities so some of this was legit.

But the bill got too high and they bought some software to keep track of which extension was making the calls.

It was the Coke machine. It had its own extension. It was supposed to call the supplier when it was low on syrup, soda, or cups, but it broke and it called constantly, 24 hours a day every day, and as soon as the number hung up on it, it called again. The supplier was in the next county, and iirc it used to cost more to call the next county than any of the other states

[micky]

HELPPP! I'm trapped in my owner's refrigerator.

s/ the butter

[thekmanrocks]

Mickey, Oren:

You guys are seriously on to something here!! Despite the fact that both my mobile and landline are registered donotcall.gov , I'm getting a RECORD AMOUNT of unsolicited calls from numbers I do not recognize.

Of the few that I answered, all there was at the other end was silence. Of the few that I called back, I got a recording "The number you have dialed is not in service at this time."

Could many of these calls be VOIPs from hardware such as vending machines or high-capacity print shop copiers?

I keep submitting complaints to donotcall, but will it help in these cases?

[thekmanrocks]

Micky, Oren:

You guys are seriously on to something here!! Despite the fact that both my mobile and landline are registered donotcall.gov , I'm getting a RECORD AMOUNT of unsolicited calls from numbers I do not recognize.

Of the few that I answered, all there was at the other end was silence. Of the few that I called back, I got a recording "The number you have dialed is not in service at this time."

Could many of these calls be VOIPs from hardware such as vending machines or high-capacity print shop copiers?

I keep submitting complaints to donotcall, but will it help in these cases?

[Ed Pawlowski]

The number you see is spoofed. The calls come from overseas and are robo dialed. If you pick up at the right time, it will not connect. The Do No Call list is ineffective against them.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

I am on the "donotcall" list too, which greatly reduced the number of junk calls. However, I still get a lot. Usually the caller ID shows a city name and state abbreviation like "OGDEN UT". I don't answer these calls and they never leave a message on the answering machine.

[micky]

Butter is very soft-spoken. Coca cola also. Despite the loud commercials, you'll see that the Coke rarely says anything.

The caller-id number was probably spoofed, with a false number.

The Coke machine used a regular phone line.

The donotcall list did wonders for me, but they have returned a bit. Less than one a week, usually for the necklace that calls the police if you can't get up (Is there more than one brand of this?)

[thekmanrocks]

micky wrote: "....The donotcall list did wonders for me, but they have returned a bit. Less than one a week, usually for the necklace that calls the police if you can't get up (Is there more than one brand of this?) "

The problem is you need HUMANS to analyze the compllaint submissions to donotcall. Is that happening regularly - or at all - given the federal budget battles of late?

And as for the numbers that do appear on my caller ID, they all have domestic area codes. So does that mean these are masquerading overseas numbers?

What a MESS!

[micky]

Either no, or not as much as should be. I hear the Food and Drug Administration is underfunded and that's even more important. And other agencies too.

I've only gotten one call, which I returned, where the callers had accents. The first one said I was delinquent on my federal income tax, but when I called, the person, who claimed to have the same name as the one who called me, but had a different accent. When I called back, the threat they made was silly. I forget what was silly about it, but all I said was "That doesn't apply to me" (because it didn't, I still thought this just might be a serious call. ) and he said "Well, Good-bye". No further attempt to scare me.

Later I googled the phone number and found it was used for a variety of scams, including mine.

It would be nice if they got rid of all of this, but since they can't, I continue to use my other techiques, leading them on, dragging out the call, wasting their time. Or telling them they're breaking the law and I would never do business with a company that breaks the law. Or a mix of these two.

Or if it gets much worse, I might record the 3-tone, line is disconnected tone in front of my phone machine's message.