Odd phone calls to mobile phone

[ARW]

This is a secret mobile number on a PAYG SIM card.

Now this new mobile gets a phonecall once a day. CLID says "unknown" and the odd thing is that it never activates the answerphone and rings for a full minute before stopping. It never calls at the same time of the day but never rings at night. It's always silent if I answer the phone.

Any ideas? I got the first phonecall within 12 hours of activating the SIM and no-one had the telephone number at the time other than me and one other person (I doubt she has anything to do with it)

[Bob Eager]

Misconfigured autodialler somewhere?

[Nightjar]

Her husband, checking on the new number she has entered on her contacts list?

Colin Bignell

[ARW]

And he can bypass the mobiles answer machine?

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

That doesn't mean the number wasn't previously someone-else's though, perhaps on a PAYG contract that fell into disuse.

[Adrian]

^ this. 100%.

[Mentalguy2k8]

lol, surely she'd have put it down as a woman's name and the word "work" in brackets? I knew a guy who used to do that, his missus would phone every new male or female contact but she wouldn't mess with his (work) contacts in case she got him into trouble with his boss, dozy cow.

[Sam Plusnet]

Try ringing it & see who answers?

[Andrew Mawson]

Difficult to ring 'unknown' but if you know a way I'd dearly like to hear it :)

AWEM

[Jim K]

the only thing that seems able to defeat my moby's answer phone is the answer phone itself ringing me to deliver a received message....

Jim K

[SteveW]

The number will be known by your phone service provider. There is an obscure piece of European legislation that I found a couple of years ago, but I can't remember where. It states that the phone companies

*CAN* provide you with the number where calls are of a nuisance nature - which would include repeated silent calls.

SteveW

[Graham.]

Ok I'll bite.

I'm not sure what "unknown" means in the context of CLID, but "withheld" AKA "private" are not really anonymous, they are simply flagged for the terminating telco not to release the number to the called party.

So what you need is a terminating telco that does not honour the withheld flag. In practical terms this means VoIP. For example numbergroup.com lets you ignore the flag and pass the withheld number

Here's a screenshot

Remember, it still works if the call is forwarded, your anonymous caller does not have to dial your new VoIP number.

There are no doubt some legal obligation on you if you choose to enable this feature.

Oh and one more warning, Numbergroup allows you to sign up and try their services on a trial basis for an unspecified time, but they will try to invoice you for services used. They are not like Sipgate and others that allow you to freeload if you don't actually make calls.

[Graham.]

FWIW that's what I was thinking too. Adam doesn't say which network he is on.

[Brian Gaff]

Chances are its a recycled number and there is some bot some place that has it on its list of numbers to ring and nobody knows why. Brian

[ARW]

On EE. And the other odd thing is that the call is not registered in the call log.

[Jim K]

Ah well that's easy - ghosts (or her mother:-D)

Jim K

[ARW]

When you say used does he no longer do it? Sounds like a control freak or insecure to me.