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Getting a vanity phone number with four consecutive digits
- LinuxBender 4y agoBefore someone does this, consider one possible risk. People can easily remember vanity numbers. That is the risk. I did this when I worked in a wireless provider and it was a mistake in my case. It was one of the factors that made me the go-to person for just about any problem and I was the default person to call for a myriad of issues. I was so happy to rid myself of that number. As a positive note this helped enforce a discipline in me to guide people to a ticketing system.
- PainfullyNormal 4y agoI'd settle for a number that wasn't previously used. I've had my current number for 8 years and the caller id still shows the previous owner. I still get all manner of calls for the previous owner too, everything from local politicians asking for money to old friends asking if he's in town and wants to hang out.
- nucleardog 4y agoThis is why I've hung onto my same number for... nearly 20 years now. Besides "looking" fake, the entire prefix was _just_ assigned when I got my number. No one's had it before me. I get next-to-zero spam calls, wrong numbers, calls for past owners, or anything else.
- whoopdedo 4y agoWhen I signed up for GVoice it gave me the option to enter the last 4 digits and it would give me the number if it was available. I took advantage of this to make my phone number a palindrome (except for the area code).
- gurjeet 4y agoI took advantage of this same Google Voice feature, and got myself a number with _7_ consecutive digits. So my phone number for an international caller is +1-234-567-xyzy. It was very easy for my kids to memorize as they were growing up. Sometimes, when I'm telling them my number for them to note down, people stop midway through until they realize I'm not really pranking them. I'm sure people would not take me seriously if my number had all 10 digits in a sequence and started to repeat after that.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoI've got one that ends in xxx-6789. It makes it easy for kids to remember and it gets a nice little "huh!" from people when I tell them. Seven though, that's a whole 'nother ball game.
- endtime 4y agoBack in the day, Google Voice let you find a number that matched a string, as in 1-800-LAWYERS. I got a number that, inclusive of area code (!), is of the form XYXY-<my first name>. It has a couple other interesting and obvious properties I can't share without making it too easy to guess the number, so I'll just say that it's a great number and I hope I never lose it.
- CosmicShadow 4y agoMy wife got her phone number (randomly) many, many years ago that turned out to be the old number for "The Edge" radio station and got calls for years about people trying to request songs or answer trivia questions. Just some of the things that happen when you have one of those easy to remember numbers which are usually owned by taxi companies or pizza places.
- unstatusthequo 4y agoI have a number ending in 6969. I got some very entertaining text messages and calls for a year or so.
- garblegarble 4y agoIt took me longer than I'd like to admit to realise the author meant "repeating digits" when they said "consecutive digits" - I was scouring the examples for "1234" etc. This is a neat idea!
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI was also confused. I think the author is confusing the two words.
- OJFord 4y agoThat or 'consecutive digits that are the same', i.e. 'four consecutive 1s' would've made sense, it's just mis-generalised to 'digits'. If anything it's the 'sequential' implication of 'consecutive digits' (that I agree the phrase has) that's weird IMO.
- phphphphp 4y agoI just bought one off eBay, cost ~$100. Totally pointless but what’s an overpaid software engineer to do with their money if not vanity.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nuclearnice1 4y ago> what’s an overpaid software engineer to do with their money https://beatmalaria.org/donate/ https://beatmalaria.org/donate/
- xeromal 4y agoThank god there are some real people in here. haha How was the handoff process for the number?
- andygcook 4y agoI had a friend in high school who was randomly assigned a mobile number that contained exactly two digits - 3 & 9 (excluding the +1 for the US country code.) Over a decade later, it’s one of the few phone numbers I can remember off the top of my head where the person isn’t in my immediate family.
- gmac 4y agoIn the UK, when I was at school and at a time when numbers were shorter, I had a friend in the mid Sussex area (dialling code 0444) with a number that was mostly 4s. That made his number from anywhere in the world +44 444 4x4y4. I’ve always remembered his number too.
- stevesimmons 4y agoMy vanity phone number has the year I was born and 6502, the CPU in my first computer.
- tomcam 4y agoSweet!
- h4waii 4y agoThe author mentions it, but Burp Suite has both a "Repeater" and "Intruder" mode which can be used to do all of this without writing a single line of code.
- oefrha 4y agoPro tip: don’t hit a private API in a loop without any delay like the author.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nayuki 4y agoWhen I and my friends in Toronto signed up for mobile phone service about 15 years ago, we simply got to pick our last 4 digits. I saw examples like picking the same suffix as their landline, picking a mnemonic for their name (e.g. MARY -> 6279), picking lots of trailing zeros.
- drdec 4y ago> I saw examples like picking the same suffix as their landline I did that, to make it easier for people to remember, which is moot now. And now when I log into my bank or other account, they ask me if I want to get a text to XXX-XXX-8436 or XXX-XXX-8436? One is my cell and one is my landline and I'll be damned if I can tell which is which.
- Scoundreller 4y ago> and a nice number to give out when you don’t want to give out your real one. I’ve setup a voip.ms number just for voicemail. Unanswered calls to my phone get redirected to that number after X rings (this functionality is baked into gsm). Then the voicemails get emailed to me so I never deal with my provider’s voicemail IVR. So for people I don’t want to call me, I give them that voicemail number and it always goes straight to voicemail. It’s also nice because I can still get and keep voicemails if I’m, say, out of country for 30 days because my provider deletes them after 10 or something days. Easy to share and save voicemails automagically.
- thfuran 4y agoI use a voip.ms IVR to filter calls since I was getting so many spam calls on my phone. Whitelisted numbers ring through and everyone else has to press a number. It totally killed all spam.
- happyopossum 4y ago> I never deal with my provider’s voicemail IVR In the era of smartphones, why would anyone use an IVR for voicemail? On phone VM UI was a launch day feature for iPhone…
- Scoundreller 4y agoOnly if your provider supports it. I’m in the 4th world when it comes to telecoms (Canada). I only set this all up in the first place because our providers charged for voicemail more recently than you’d like to know.
- koofdoof 4y agoThis post reminds me of the chapter in Steve Wozniak's biography dedicated to his obsession with phone numbers. It details his favorite owned numbers and attempts to convince phone companies to sell him numbers that make have interesting properties when converted to binary.
- frankthedog 4y agoWhen I was young, maybe 13, I found Woz’s phone number online and called it from my cell which has 6 repeating digits. He must have enjoyed seeing my number because he answered! In a star struck moment of panic I hung up after hearing his voice. One of my big regrets to this day.
- addingnumbers 4y ago> I went through and bought a dummy number to figure out how to purchase the number programatically, and then did the same method as above to purchase it. This guy is going a little hard on the automation at the end there, what's the point of automating a one-in-a-lifetime task? Just buy the one number you want instead of the dummy number and you're done.
- soared 4y agoExploration and fun
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- happyopossum 4y agoYou have to be presented the number in the UI to buy it in the UI…
- addingnumbers 4y agoGood catch, I wish he mentioned that explicitly but I guess I could have inferred it from the screenshot
- twhb 4y agoI got a memorable phone number a while ago. Websites like numberbarn.com make it relatively easy. A key realization I had is that repeating numbers aren’t the thing to look for, because they’re what everybody is depleting and marking up, and actually aren’t a very good proxy for what you really care about, which is memorability and maybe aesthetics. For example, 34567 is better than 37771, and also more likely to be available and cheap. Repeating digits and their associated markup are also about typability, but that probably barely matters to you if people are almost always calling from their address book.
- LordDragonfang 4y agoOn a similar note, if you ever need to provide a (US) number for a discount and they don't verify it (like at grocery stores) you can almost always just use a 555 number [1] in the format: XXX-555-01XX These are designated as "fake" numbers and are used in TV and film when they need to show a number on screen but don't want to open up some random person to prank calls. Also, these numbers are almost always going to already be registered in a rewards program: XXX-555-5555 555-555-5555 XXX-867-5309 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number)
- Terretta 4y agoAnd of course 555-1212 which contains all the other numbers.
- sethbannon 4y agoOne of my YC batchmates had his company acquired by Google. They quickly shut down his product (shocking!) and had him product manage Google Fi instead. He gave me access to the beta about 7 years ago. At that time, you could search for any string of numbers and it would let you see available numbers containing that string. I was able to get a number with 4 consecutive zeros in it and to this day it brings me joy every time I see or share it. Most people are not as amused but every now and then I'll meet someone who lights up when they see it. Without fail, they were also a math nerd growing up. I guess numbers tickle some people's brains differently.
- skinnymuch 4y agoI’m not a big math nerd, but I’m also a programmer so maybe I have an slanted bias of what that means. Being ND also helps. I would love to see four consecutive numbers. I have kept two numbers around to now with 2 and 3 consecutive same digits. So XYY-ZYYY numbers without area code. With area code they are AYB-XYY-ZYYY for two diff area codes. I’d love giving up any Y overlap if the last four can be consecutive especially if it’s 4.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoND = ?
- HelenePhisher 4y agoneurodiverse.
- bpye 4y agoI ended up picking my current number because it had a power of two. A silly thing but it amused me.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoSome years ago, I met someone whose license plate was: 4745454B I immediately felt that something was up with that, took a few more seconds that I would have liked to figure out what it was.
- smallerfish 4y agoI bought a DID on voip.ms with 5 consecutive digits. They allow you to search by any substring, though you can only search within a single area code, so it takes a little hunting and pecking to find a good one.
- skinnymuch 4y agoasomeone can get a nice number then port it out right?
- smallerfish 4y agoYep
- skinnymuch 4y agoCool!
- asdkhadsj 4y agoI had one a long time ago i liked, from Google iirc, something to the effect of 454-5451 (but different, ofc). To which i would rattle off "45 45 45 1" and confuse the hell out of every listener i was trying to convey the phone number. As much as i loved it, i stopped using it because of how confused it made literally everyone i gave it to in my unexpected format haha. The novelty wore off when i would inevitably have to repeat myself in the normal format.
- RC_ITR 4y agoWhat’s amazing about that, is if you did “454” “54” “51” people would probably react positively because they would feel like they “figured it out”. Your problem was a) breaking convention b) not letting the other party get their own dopamine boost.
- skinnymuch 4y agoYeah letting people figure it out or giving obvious but not complete hints so they figure it out would Bork great. It would make it more memorable for me.
- gtirloni 4y ago> The novelty wore off when i would inevitably have to repeat myself in the normal format. Same with a custom domain I had for emails. People just expect you to say "@gmail.com".
- MivLives 4y agoI had both of these problems. My number used to be something like 555-348-8889. My email uses a domain hack of my last name so like Bob@smi.th. The former eventually changed to something equally ridiculous but easier to say, the latter I'm still trying to figure out how to say out loud after 8 years.
- asdkhadsj 4y agohah, i have bobs.mi (ie intentionally missing last letters of my name, letting me do bobs.mi/th sort of stuff). I've often debated setting my email up.. maybe i shouldn't, /shrug Though i don't know what i'd use anyway. me@bobs.mi sounds .. annoying to say over the phone lol. Maybe i lean into it, at@bobs.mi or space@bobs.mi... heh
- anonymousiam 4y agoI've had a non-vanity phone number with five consecutive (non-repeating) digits for over 25 years. Even before the advent of phone spam and robocalling, it was receiving a lot more calls than my other phones. Many of the calls were from kids playing with a phone. It seems to be more likely than not that people press consecutive digits when dialing a "random" phone number. Separately, I once bought a cell phone in a city with a brand new overlay area code, and they gave me this number: 424-210-0000. They were really surprised when I told them that I did not want it and had them port my old cell phone number to it instead. I suppose I could have kept it and then sold it to someone else. Apparently such things have value to some people, mostly businesses.
- gtirloni 4y ago> Apparently such things have value to some people, mostly businesses. It was more valuable when we didn't have smartphones or couldn't just look up any number online at any time. There was an advantage in having an easy to remember number that didn't require people to look in the yellow pages. Yes, I was there 3000 years ago.
- jffry 4y agoI remember it being very common for taxi numbers to have 555-5555 in their local area code
- Joe8Bit 4y agoI had a UK mobile number that had seven consecutive digits (e.g. 079* 444 4444). I got it through a friend who worked in provisioning at a new mobile operator that had just been assigned its new number blocks. The problem was people would constantly try to "steal" the number. Four or five times a year my phone would just stop working because someone had "persuaded" a call-centre worker at my provider to assign the number to a new SIM they could sell on eBay. Apparently people pay a LOT of money for vanity numbers. No matter what additional "security locks" they put on my account it kept getting hijacked, so eventually I just got a new (much less interesting) number.
- kingcharles 4y agoI had the same problem. Same type of 07 number as you - all consecutive. It was too much hassle. Also, with that number and my 07969696969 number that I thought was hilarious, I just had infinity prank calls all day, and worst of all, all night...
- appleiigs 4y agoAt work the telecom guy was proud of the telephone number he gave me ("very easy to remember!" he said). Well, it turns out it was one digit off of the local Alcoholics Anonymous help line. I had digit "1" and AA had "7". I got a lot of drunken phone calls and voice messages. All depressing since they were asking for help. Figured it out after a few calls, but from now on I'll take the ugly telephone numbers.
- jesterson 4y agoHad the same case when local (although quite large) bus terminal helpline had similar number. Calls like "where the heck is my bus?" or "how can get to xxx" at 2am weren't so rare until I changed the number
- jhgb 4y ago> Four or five times a year my phone would just stop working because someone had "persuaded" a call-centre worker at my provider to assign the number to a new SIM they could sell on eBay And they were unable to add a note to that account to the effect of "don't do X under any circumstances"?
- baobabKoodaa 4y agoFun fact: in the beginning of the 90's some Finnish telecom operators sold people short phone numbers, such as 050 1984. Today there exists a black market for these "lyhytnumerot" and if you want one, you'll have to pay thousands for it. But they exist and they still work.
- braingenious 4y agoFrom the article: >One drawback is that it’s not really integrated fully in your phone - for instance, iMessages to that number won’t work, and the calls need to be made through the app. That sucks! I wonder if there’s a way to fix that. As for memorable phone numbers, one of my buddy’s parents had a phone number that was XXX-YYY-0001 and boy was that helpful when I got arrested and couldn’t remember anybody else’s number. Pro Tip: Memorize a few people’s numbers!
- pacaro 4y agoAlso memorize a lawyers number if you're going to need it when arrested. If you call a buddy the police can and will listen to your call. If you call a lawyer then they can't. https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/stopped-by-police https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/stopped-by-police
- braingenious 4y agoThat’s a good link! Here is another one that everyone should be familiar with: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
- carabiner 4y agoMy cat sitter's number legit ends in -0000. Couldn't believe it. She said it was just the number she was given.
- loxias 4y agoPsh. My phone number, which I got a few years ago, has the first 6 digits of pi. :D Took writing a script to brute force google voice, but totally worth it!
- ghostly_s 4y agowhilst the author seems to have partially corrected it, it seems this applies to many commenters here as well: consecutive != repeated
- Waterluvian 4y agoIn high school my friend got the number 500-0001 and I was always so jealous. But I think the number has become kind of irrelevant these days.
- caboteria 4y agoWhen I was in high school, numbers with 0 in them were the worst because of how long they took to dial using a dial phone.
- psim1 4y agoMany VoIP providers have ordering systems that let you do vanity searches, and some have APIs. Twilio is one. You can put down a few dollars to start an account, buy a number, and then immediately port it away to a mobile carrier if you like.
- michaelterryio 4y agoWhen I was a CSR at old AirTouch Cellular I would look for cool numbers and when 999-9999 in Phoenix came available I snapped it up for my employee phone benefit. You can’t imagine how many wrong dials and prank calls you get. I gave it up after a month.
- dan_pixelflow 4y agoThe ISP I use in the UK [0] has VoIP offerings too, and they let you search for a pattern of numbers. We've got several similar numbers for our businesses and some fun 1234 patterns too. Very memorable! [0] https://aa.net.uk/ https://aa.net.uk/
- Nextgrid 4y agoI have a number ending in 1337 from them. Also keep in mind that their mobile number don't count as VoIP and will work fine for most verification purposes.
- JacobAldridge 4y agoWhen I got my first phone number (circa 2000?), I asked for something memorable. The operator rattled off 0427 151 181, which sounded fine enough. Then he pointed out it was my birthday - 15/11/81. I think that’s pretty nifty, but what really impressed me was when I met my beautiful wife several years later - because her birthday is 27/11/81, so my phone number actually includes her date as well as mine.
- isubkhankulov 4y agoYou probably know this but if that is your real date of birth, I suggest that change the numbers so that you are not leaking your and your wife’s PII on the internet. All sorts of people out there who might be able to use it to steal both your identities, crypto, etc. In fact your entire comment linking your easily obtainable phone number to your birthday might be risky to say publicly.
- TAKEMYMONEY 4y agoDon't worry, like most forum applications post-1995 HN has basic privacy controls, like editing posts or at least deleting old ones. Jk it's impossible after a short time.
- JacobAldridge 4y agoTIL ! Let's hope that doesn't come back to haunt me...
- JacobAldridge 4y agoYeah, I debated that before posting. It’s all already public information, and I know it won’t do too much from an Op Sec perspective but I planned to edit the post once the discussion drops off the front page.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- listenallyall 4y agoAnybody can find a pretty cool number if they don't care about the area code. Now play in "hard mode," which is to obtain a memorable (800) number. No, (844) or (855), etc, don't count.
- tomcam 4y agoThing is… most people have unlimited plans and don’t care anymore
- listenallyall 4y agoSimply not correct. If nobody cares, why is an 800 number more expensive? A vanity 800 close to impossible? Why is demand so high that they keep releasing new toll-free area codes (888, 877, 855, 844, 833, with 822 and 880 coming soon)? Why do desirable 800 numbers become available so infrequently? 800 is like .com Sure there are alternatives, but none are nearly as valuable as .com, or an (800) number, because they signal solid, trust-able, well-established businesses. And because they are easy to remember.
- tomcam 4y agoAgree with the second graf for old people like me, but I think it means little to the current generation.
- istillwritecode 4y agoA friend used to have 256-512-1024.
- beezle 4y agoSimilar, have a landline with (areacode) ABB-0-ABB When giving it out I'm almost always told, 'wow thats easy to remember,' exactly why I chose it. Unfortunately (AC) AC-0-AC was not available
- mleo 4y agoFor my oldest child, I used Twilio to search for something memorable in our crowded area code and then ported out to Number Barn. For the next two, I just used Number Barn directly to find two sequential numbers for them. Still have year and half before youngest gets the number ported to a mobile phone.
- daenz 4y ago"4 consecutive digits". But the code is wrong: def contains_cons(num): for i in range(len(num) - 2): if num[i] == num[i + 1] and num[i + 1] == num[i + 2]: return True return False assert not contains_cons("+1234567000")
- PebblesHD 4y agoMuch like the other posters, I have fond memories of my landline number growing up, which ended up in the format abcb bbbd which made it incredibly easy to both remember and rattle off when making take-away orders…