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Ask HN: New telemarketing strategy?
I've gotten several phone calls from telemarketers today. I noticed a curious relationship between the time of day and phone number:
Time -- Phone Number
10:25am -- XXX-XXX-1025
2:49pm -- XXX-XXX-1449
4:45pm -- XXX-XXX-1645
Is this some new trick where you can manipulate the caller ID to just show the current time in 24 hour format instead of the real last four digits? Or maybe they're just automated systems that call at the time of their last four digits because whoever wrote the schedule was feeling particularly lazy?
For some further speculation, the area code is the same as the one on my number. If I had to guess I'd say they're spoofing through some shady VOIP service?
- eb0la 14y agoThey're not spoofing callerID. It's easier than that: They just have a PBX with 4-digit as extensions mapped to the XXX-XXX-???? block. Their PBX (voip or traditional) does all that callerID magic. Since they don't have direct-dial numbers in that range, it will work. Why? This way they can see easily in their logs how many calls start at a given minute, and check that the phone company is billing correctly their calls.