Not every U.S. telephone number beginning with 555 is fake | Hacker News Reader

Not every U.S. telephone number beginning with 555 is fake

techrepublic.com

48 pointsjgarmon38 comments

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_%28telephone_number%29

Much more interesting (from a hacker's perspective) were all the telco services provided using specific exchanges. For any given ILEC there was an exchange used for services provided to customers or employees, including everything from phone testing services and remote terminal access to business customer information and voicemail. By calling these numbers you could find some neat hidden services, and they were free from any phone. You can imagine how bored kids at school with a payphone could discover quite a bit in their spare time.

The DATU was my favorite. It was a secret lineman's number to test circuits, which also enabled you to listen in on live lines. Using these numbers without proper authorization meant jail time, but they had to catch you first :) Ringback was also a fun way to pass the time. Dial the number and hang up, and 30 seconds later the phone would start ringing, and i'd watch who would go answer it. Like I said, bored kids...

As a kid I remember these numbers we would call up and hear a bunch of other kids faintly having conversations in the background (and you could join in). Was many years ago perhaps someone else could fill in the details if they remember exactly.

I have the phone number 5555 5555 in a capital city - it's unlisted, never advertised, and still gets about 10 calls a day, mostly from babies and drunks. If you do get a number like this, and want to use it, I would suggest putting it behind an IVR and asking callers to press * to continue. We dump all the non compliant users to a voicemail, which is entertaining to listen to once in a while.

When we got the number first, it was not possible to call it from the major mobile networks as they had blacklisted it as a test number!

Not only are they not fake, but you can have one today!

Callcentric is an "internet phone service", which has been around for at least 8+ years. They allow you to search for unused phone numbers [1] in various area codes [2]. I searched for unused 555 numbers in the following area codes (213, 310, 626, 818) all have some available! So, you could create an account, and for something like $3/month, forward this 555 number to your existing number [3].

[1] http://www.callcentric.com/did_lookup.php?type=check_by_us_n...

[2] http://www.bennetyee.org/ucsd-pages/area.html

[3] http://www.callcentric.com/dids/phone_number_sale

Similar: not every 192.x.x.x IP address is in a private (RFC1918) network.

This is interesting. Do you know who controls these public addresses? I know in the past I've seen filtered connections to 192.x.x.x thinking that it would get only internal connections then. The owners of these public addresses could wreak havoc in some places.

From http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1918

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has reserved the following three blocks of the IP address space for private internets:

     10.0.0.0        -   10.255.255.255  (10/8 prefix)
     172.16.0.0      -   172.31.255.255  (172.16/12 prefix)
     192.168.0.0     -   192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)

RFC1918[1] defines 192.168.x.x as the private address space, so anything else in the 192.x.x.x range would not fall under that specification.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1918#page-4

There's a university with a 192.16x.x.x allocation who has written about the confusion it's caused.

Nothing that special about it from a CIDR point of view -- but is rather confusing to us humans when written as a dotted quad.

Github's GITHUB-NET4-1 is on 192.30.252.0/22, which is what reminded me of this.

Heck, the University of Waterloo has 129.97.0.0/16, and I see people get confused all the time between 192.168. (private) and 129. (publicly routed).

I have a 192.40.x.x address assigned to a VPS I have from a small random hosting company in colorado.

I got 3 192.x.x.x addresses from Ramnode for one of my nodes. They can't be that rare.

Well according to RFC1918 only the 192.168.x.x space is private as it's a /16.

I always wonder why people don't just use 10.0.0.X - it's easier to write, to tell people on the phone, and to remember if needs be.

Several reasons. The biggest is what netmask to use. 192.168.x.x was originally a class C (/24) and the default netmask to use is that resulting in the least number of problems.

With 10.x.x.x, the original was class A (/8) but it is extremely unlikely you want that as the netmask. Other guesses could be wrong.

Additionally because of its size, it is likely used in corporate networks. This would cause grief with vpns if both your local network is 10.x.x.x and the corporate vpn is 10.x.x.x.

This isn't new at all. For as far back as I can remember you could dial 555-1212 from any area code and get directory assistance for that area code. There's even a toll free 800 number (1-800-555-1212) which prompts you for the city you'd like.

Haven't used it in a long time (seriously who would when you can search the internet on your smartphone?) but I think it's the same service as 411 minus the $X/min fee (the 800 number version is free, I think the non-800 versions might bill you).

The area-555-1212 one actually is the most expensive at $3.50 according to Wikipedia [1]. There is toll-free directory assistance (it doesn't say what number) from AT&T, where the 800-number owner pays for any lookups.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555-1212

UK numbers for drama...

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/numbering/guidance...

We use those as placeholder text on our registration forms.

use. I'm from the UK, living in Canada and I find the UK numbering better, esp since I can distinguish between a mobile phone and a land line.

I understand that calling a landline is the same thing as call a cell in North America, but it's why there is this mess of incoming minutes vs outgoing minutes allowances and "roaming" charges for leaving a state. Annoying as hell and means you can't get a cheap PAYG sim :(

What's next? EXAMPLE.COM becomes an actual site?

In that same line of thinking, who gets the email @test.com?

The people at test.com! They sounds a bit cranky.

  http://contactx.test.com/contactX/contact-spam.cfm

(Very OT) Wow, test.com actually have a patent for "Internet test-making"

http://www.google.com/patents/US6513042

Cranky indeed. Unrelated but they have a misspelling on the referenced page:

"We can NOT control what other people forge in an email return address header and send using thier computers."

And the mail for 123 Fake Street?

Presumably whoever lives here http://www.trulia.com/property/3075968468-123-Fake-St-York-P...

I own (my username)@gmail.com and I get test emails several times a week.

Does anyone else see how dangerous this is? Nefarious people could obtain common names like this and monitor them for submissions with personal data from ignorant developers testing software.

Sure the issue is with the dev who made the mistake, but the result is nonetheless dangerous enough to warrant concern with security folk.

The owner of foo@bar.com has written a little blurb about the crap he gets at http://bar.com/

the guy who owns acme.com has similar problems

...as I'm sure domain.com (a registrar) does to

Have you looked at it recently?

I suppose a lot depends on your definition of the word 'actual', but there's definitely definitely something there replying on port 80, if nothing else.

Slight correction needed to the article: Mexico left the NANP in the late 90s and has adopted its own country code and dialing plan. It hasn't changed much since but you do need to use 011 and whatever code it is now to dial there.

Imagine your domain becomes your telephone number one day! Or your IP. Well, you can already do that I supposed with VoIP

Can't wait!

"Hey Jim, give me a call at 2607 f0d0 1002 0051 0000 0000 0000 0004 when you get a minute" :)

In that case, telephone number can never run out if used Ipv6 version. Reusable too! Totally mobile! And you don't even need to pay for mobile bill. Just an internet bill, $10 more. Woho.

Now all we need is a catchy jingle for Moss to sing along to.

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