4 ms·

Well nobody has the phone number 912 for instance. We specifically make sensitive numbers distinct from "regular" numbers. 911, 411, 311, 999, etc.

dataflow 2y ago
You seem to have no clue what numbers are sensitive? Bank or government phone number could be used to impersonate and steal people's identities, among a whole host of other numbers. Not everything is a life and death matter (and neither was the Mastercard incident).
aidenn0 2y ago
I had a friend whose phone number was 591-1XXX and if I picked up the phone and dialed too fast, the 5 might not get recognized by the switch and I'd end up on 911, where I had to say "sorry, wrong number"
- wging 2y ago
  I had almost the same experience. Getting 911 by accident was pretty scary at age 6 or so.
- w-ll 2y ago
  Also the 910 area code
  - mindcrime 2y ago
    Apropos of nothing in particular... that brings back a memory (I used to dispatch for a 911 center in the 910 area code). You get some weird stuff in 911 centers sometimes (go figure, right?). In this case, the thing that sticks in my mind is this payphone that used to be on Bald Head Island by the gazebo. It apparently developed some sort of intermittent fault (possibly due to exposure to salt air, but who really knows?) where it would occasionally call 911 on its own. Or at least that seemed to be the case. We'd occasionally get a call from it, with no one speaking on the other end, and we'd send BHI public safety out there and they wouldn't find anybody around it. Now you might speculate that it was kids playing or something, but based on the time(s) of the calls, the demographics of the island, etc. we always believed it was just some sort of phone malfunction.
    - EvanAnderson 2y ago
      I do IT support for a 911 center. We get about one of these per month coming from landlines on the ILEC's old copper cable plant. On one serendipitous occasion the fault came from a school district I also support. The fault came from a contingency landline kept around in case the VoIP phone system lost digital PSTN connectivity. I was able to plug-in to the line w/ a butt set and hear clicky, buzzy, nightmarishly bad PSTN sounds thru it. We turned it over to the ILEC and they "fixed" it. Given the number of "roadkill" splice pedestals I see in my area I feel pretty confident the ILEC isn't doing any maintenance of the copper cable plant at all. (It makes me pretty irritated, considering the favorable tax subsidies they received to build it.)
      - mindcrime 2y ago
        Given the number of "roadkill" splice pedestals I see in my area I feel pretty confident the ILEC isn't doing any maintenance of the copper cable plant at all. Yep. In a number of places the old ILEC's have publicly declared their intention to deprecate the old copper based PSTN. In other areas, they seem to be practicing a sort of "malicious neglect" and just letting it decay on the vine, to avoid spending money on maintenance.
    - emmelaich 2y ago
      That a good start on a good horror or thriller story.
      - mindcrime 2y ago
        It's unrelated (as far as I know) but in an interesting bit of synchronicity, a BHI public safety officer died under somewhat mysterious/controversial circumstances somewhere in that area. It was a few years after I moved out of the area and I'm not familiar with all of the details. https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/mysterious-death-davina-buff-jones/ https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/mysterious-death-davina-buff-... https://www.southernfriedtruecrime.com/38-officer-davina-buff-jones https://www.southernfriedtruecrime.com/38-officer-davina-buf... https://portcitydaily.com/local-news/2013/12/17/brunswick-da-changes-cause-of-death-of-bald-head-island-police-officer-from-suicide-to-undetermined/ https://portcitydaily.com/local-news/2013/12/17/brunswick-da...
- RIMR 2y ago
  Modern cell phones don't even dial the number. They just record that you dialed an emergency number, and route an emergency call. Tried dialing 112 once just to see what would happen, and it immediately connected me to 911. Interesting conversation with the dispatcher when I told them that I had not, in fact, dialed 911.
  - emmelaich 2y ago
    It's not well known but I believe all of 911(us), 112(eu), 000(au) will work in all of the above countries. And others, almost certainly.
    - lmz 2y ago
      At least 112 and 911 are standardised in GSM. https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/wp-content/uploads//NG.119-v1.0-3.pdf https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/wp-content/uploads//NG.119-v1....
    - miki123211 2y ago
      112 is an emergency number "by specification", it will always work (on GSM/UMTS/Vo LTE networks, NOT on landlines)), no matter what country you're in. I think this also applies to 911, although I'm not 100% sure about this. Numbers like 000 are a different matter, there are scenarios in which they might not work even if you're in Australia (when you have a non-australian SIM or no SIM at all, for example). For more about this, see e.g. https://nickvsnetworking.com/tales-from-the-trenches-emergency-calling-when-roaming/ https://nickvsnetworking.com/tales-from-the-trenches-emergen...
      - IYasha 2y ago
        AFAIR, 112 is defined by some ITU or 3GPP standard, which is honored in at least Europe/Russia region. In other places different numbers might as well be routed to it or (even better) redefined inside terminal software (SIM). But I no longer work in that area, so can't be 100% sure.
  - ipdashc 2y ago
pwg 2y ago
And yet, almost every private PBX uses "9" as the magic "get an outside line" number. Which then if one is calling a "long distance" number, one's next digit is "1", and "9" followed by "1" is only one mis-dialed digit away from becoming a "911" call. I.e., New York's original area code is 212, someone in CA, dialing "long distance" to New York needs to dial 9 1 212 xxx xxxx. One button off on the first "2" and they just made a call to 911.
- ipdashc 2y ago
  Notably, this is only guaranteed by law to work as of 2020 - see Kari's Law: https://www.911.gov/issues/legislation-and-policy/kari-s-law-and-ray-baum-s-act/ https://www.911.gov/issues/legislation-and-policy/kari-s-law... It is, unfortunately, one of those rules that's written in blood. Before that, on some systems you'd have to dial 9 to get outside, and then "911" again, so "9911".
wink 2y ago
Germany has 112 for emergencies and 110 for the police, kinda easy to mistype. So only true for certain degrees of "nobody".

dataflow 2y ago

You seem to have no clue what numbers are sensitive? Bank or government phone number could be used to impersonate and steal people's identities, among a whole host of other numbers. Not everything is a life and death matter (and neither was the Mastercard incident).

aidenn0 2y ago

I had a friend whose phone number was 591-1XXX and if I picked up the phone and dialed too fast, the 5 might not get recognized by the switch and I'd end up on 911, where I had to say "sorry, wrong number"

wging 2y ago
I had almost the same experience. Getting 911 by accident was pretty scary at age 6 or so.
w-ll 2y ago
Also the 910 area code
- mindcrime 2y ago
  Apropos of nothing in particular... that brings back a memory (I used to dispatch for a 911 center in the 910 area code). You get some weird stuff in 911 centers sometimes (go figure, right?). In this case, the thing that sticks in my mind is this payphone that used to be on Bald Head Island by the gazebo. It apparently developed some sort of intermittent fault (possibly due to exposure to salt air, but who really knows?) where it would occasionally call 911 on its own. Or at least that seemed to be the case. We'd occasionally get a call from it, with no one speaking on the other end, and we'd send BHI public safety out there and they wouldn't find anybody around it. Now you might speculate that it was kids playing or something, but based on the time(s) of the calls, the demographics of the island, etc. we always believed it was just some sort of phone malfunction.
  - EvanAnderson 2y ago
    I do IT support for a 911 center. We get about one of these per month coming from landlines on the ILEC's old copper cable plant. On one serendipitous occasion the fault came from a school district I also support. The fault came from a contingency landline kept around in case the VoIP phone system lost digital PSTN connectivity. I was able to plug-in to the line w/ a butt set and hear clicky, buzzy, nightmarishly bad PSTN sounds thru it. We turned it over to the ILEC and they "fixed" it. Given the number of "roadkill" splice pedestals I see in my area I feel pretty confident the ILEC isn't doing any maintenance of the copper cable plant at all. (It makes me pretty irritated, considering the favorable tax subsidies they received to build it.)
    - mindcrime 2y ago
      Given the number of "roadkill" splice pedestals I see in my area I feel pretty confident the ILEC isn't doing any maintenance of the copper cable plant at all. Yep. In a number of places the old ILEC's have publicly declared their intention to deprecate the old copper based PSTN. In other areas, they seem to be practicing a sort of "malicious neglect" and just letting it decay on the vine, to avoid spending money on maintenance.
  - emmelaich 2y ago
    That a good start on a good horror or thriller story.
    - mindcrime 2y ago
      It's unrelated (as far as I know) but in an interesting bit of synchronicity, a BHI public safety officer died under somewhat mysterious/controversial circumstances somewhere in that area. It was a few years after I moved out of the area and I'm not familiar with all of the details. https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/mysterious-death-davina-buff-jones/ https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/mysterious-death-davina-buff-... https://www.southernfriedtruecrime.com/38-officer-davina-buff-jones https://www.southernfriedtruecrime.com/38-officer-davina-buf... https://portcitydaily.com/local-news/2013/12/17/brunswick-da-changes-cause-of-death-of-bald-head-island-police-officer-from-suicide-to-undetermined/ https://portcitydaily.com/local-news/2013/12/17/brunswick-da...
RIMR 2y ago
Modern cell phones don't even dial the number. They just record that you dialed an emergency number, and route an emergency call. Tried dialing 112 once just to see what would happen, and it immediately connected me to 911. Interesting conversation with the dispatcher when I told them that I had not, in fact, dialed 911.
- emmelaich 2y ago
  It's not well known but I believe all of 911(us), 112(eu), 000(au) will work in all of the above countries. And others, almost certainly.
  - lmz 2y ago
    At least 112 and 911 are standardised in GSM. https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/wp-content/uploads//NG.119-v1.0-3.pdf https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/wp-content/uploads//NG.119-v1....
  - miki123211 2y ago
    112 is an emergency number "by specification", it will always work (on GSM/UMTS/Vo LTE networks, NOT on landlines)), no matter what country you're in. I think this also applies to 911, although I'm not 100% sure about this. Numbers like 000 are a different matter, there are scenarios in which they might not work even if you're in Australia (when you have a non-australian SIM or no SIM at all, for example). For more about this, see e.g. https://nickvsnetworking.com/tales-from-the-trenches-emergency-calling-when-roaming/ https://nickvsnetworking.com/tales-from-the-trenches-emergen...
    - IYasha 2y ago
      AFAIR, 112 is defined by some ITU or 3GPP standard, which is honored in at least Europe/Russia region. In other places different numbers might as well be routed to it or (even better) redefined inside terminal software (SIM). But I no longer work in that area, so can't be 100% sure.
- ipdashc 2y ago

pwg 2y ago

And yet, almost every private PBX uses "9" as the magic "get an outside line" number. Which then if one is calling a "long distance" number, one's next digit is "1", and "9" followed by "1" is only one mis-dialed digit away from becoming a "911" call. I.e., New York's original area code is 212, someone in CA, dialing "long distance" to New York needs to dial 9 1 212 xxx xxxx. One button off on the first "2" and they just made a call to 911.

ipdashc 2y ago
Notably, this is only guaranteed by law to work as of 2020 - see Kari's Law: https://www.911.gov/issues/legislation-and-policy/kari-s-law-and-ray-baum-s-act/ https://www.911.gov/issues/legislation-and-policy/kari-s-law... It is, unfortunately, one of those rules that's written in blood. Before that, on some systems you'd have to dial 9 to get outside, and then "911" again, so "9911".

wink 2y ago

Germany has 112 for emergencies and 110 for the police, kinda easy to mistype. So only true for certain degrees of "nobody".