911 Prank Call Idiocy

[Kogarashi]

Every emergency number I've ever heard of is always free, from any phone. You don't have to fumble for change at a payphone, or worry about the cost of it if you're on the breadline. On landlines, if you can get a dialtone, you can get to emergency, even if the account is otherwise blocked.

Usually even mobiles without a SIM installed can call to emergency, and some will even recognise the digits being pressed while the keypad is locked (which causes a lot of accidental calls).

Some will also recognize the numbers being put in, so if you stop at 911 without hitting "Send" (or "Talk" or whatever), and sometimes if you just get 9-1 and then stop, it'll assume an emergency interrupted you and autodial the rest. Oops.

Such incidents are the cause of a lot of crooks accidentally calling 911 on themselves.

[Andara Bledin]

Either the regular phones or just the system my work uses will also dial "911" if you have the numbers "911" early on in an otherwise normal-looking phone number. I found that out the hard way, once, when I mis-dialed.

Also, since we have to dial "9" to get an outside line, phone numbers that have a "1" as the second digit of the area code are potential landmines since the number you dial to go to a different area code is also a "1." So if you manage to not fully press the first number of the code, you've got "911."

Obviously, dialing "911" goes directly to an outside line without needing another "9."

^-.-^

[LillFilly]

The fact that all phones have to be able to dial 911 is a blessing and a curse. ESPECIALLY a curse because we have payphones at every entrance to the mall, and we get a lot of 911 hang-ups from the bored kids of parents waiting for the bus because they didn't realize that letting their kids play with the payphones was a bad idea. I actually told one mother not to let her kid play on the phone because she'd just dialed 911 and she said "but we didn't put any money in!" GRAAAHHH!!!!

Like I said, at least dispatch let us know what was happening instead of sending a swat team in guns blazing, because that would have scared the crap out of me and resulted in a whole lot more paperwork! Most of the dispatchers I've had interactions with have been pretty cool. I've only had maybe 1 or 2 in several years that drove me nuts! Then kind that don't quite seem to believe what you're trying to tell them, get every piece of information you give them wrong, and talk to you like you're a 3-year old!

[trunks2k]

I thought that the "..." was normally referred to as triangulation, even though it's distance based rather than straight-line based. (I'm assuming that "proper" triangulation is what you do for map-making to get scale right, with lining things up in a straight line from various points).

Triangulation uses angles. Angles are not a consideration in UTDOA.

[Magpie]

Triangulation uses angles. Angles are not a consideration in UTDOA.

Ok, what I was talking about, for map-making, was explained to me as triangulation, because you were making a triangle (the angles are implied, not used explicitly). And, right or wrong, it is used to describe the cell-phone technique.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

when i was about 10 or so i was reeeeeally bored at one of my brother's soccer games. so i went to the nearest pay phone and dialed 911 because i thought it wouldn't do anything if i didn't put in money. apparently 911's free on payphones because someone answered. i hung up and ran back to my parents crying because i thought i was going to get arrested for prank-calling 911. like police officers were gonna show up and haul my butt to jail or something.

I thought the same thing at the tender age of 3 when I dialed "0" for the Operator (which was back in the early 1970's - way before 911 service came here.)

I slammed that phone down and hid under the bed and wouldn't touch a phone again for several years after that.

Then it was several more years before I'd even pick up the telephone after I'd accidentally called a wrong number when I was 9 . . .

But then even now, at the age of 41, if I don't recognize the number, I let the answering machine take the call.

[Pagan]

My favorite is still the hag that called 911 because they fast food place kept screwing up her cheeseburger.

The best lines from dispatch:

"Ma'am, we're not gonna to go down there and enforce your Western Bacon Cheeseburger"

"Is this like....is this a harmful cheeseburger or something? I don't understand what you want us to do."

[mattm04]

My favorite is still the hag that called 911 because they fast food place kept screwing up her cheeseburger.

The best lines from dispatch:

"Ma'am, we're not gonna to go down there and enforce your Western Bacon Cheeseburger"

"Is this like....is this a harmful cheeseburger or something? I don't understand what you want us to do."

Give the SC a taste of Jail food. Mmmmmm, blongna and white bread.

[Pagan]

Give the SC a taste of Jail food. Mmmmmm, blongna and white bread.

Hmm, doesn't sound too bad to me.

Funny side story. The APS system allows kids to charge a certain number of their lunches if they forget to bring money. Well, there were a lot of parents not making good on the outstanding bills, so they cut the kids off. Now, they weren't not feeding them. They would get a cheese sandwich, apple (or some sort of fruit), and milk. Parents went ballistic saying that was a horrible lunch, because it wasn't hot. It was pointed out that a lot of people have that for lunch on a regular basis.

[Shalom]

OOOO! OOOO! I could go on about this at length since I do this for a living. It's not really triangulation. In the US the most popular network based location technology for cell phones (i.e. not GPS) is UTDOA.

Well, unless you're in Verizon territory. They've gone with the GPS-based system, because you can't register a phone on VZN's network unless it's GPS equipped. This way they can shift the cost of the E-911 system on to their customers, by making them buy more expensive phones, rather than investing in the kind of system you describe in your post (which would work with any phone, GPS or not.)

The older non-GPS phones were grandfathered in, but they did what they could to get them off the network, including what I believe was deliberate sabotage of my phone. No, I'm not exhibiting symptoms of paranoia here. I had an old reliable Nokia 5180, without GPS, and one day they uploaded a new PRL to it that was so long it overran the (very limited) user memory and clobbered the firmware (which they then refused to re-flash, thereby turning the phone into a brick). I did some asking around on the Telecom Digest and found I wasn't the only one this happened to. Now they knew what kind of phone I had, so they should have been aware of the limitations of its hardware; I have to assume that they were specifically trying to knock the old phones off their network by doing this.

There's a copy of my old rant, with followups, at this issue of the telecom digest.

[trunks2k]

Well, unless you're in Verizon territory. They've gone with the GPS-based system, because you can't register a phone on VZN's network unless it's GPS equipped.

Yeah VZN has GPS. They almost used my company's system instead. Legend has it that we were all set to have the contract signed, a party was set up, champagne was ordered etc. Everyone was at the party waiting to hear the good news when someone came in and said we lost the contract at the quite literally last minute because the guy from our company somehow really pissed off Verizon. I forgot what the guy had done, but it was pretty bad.

This way they can shift the cost of the E-911 system on to their customers, by making them buy more expensive phones, rather than investing in the kind of system you describe in your post (which would work with any phone, GPS or not.)

Well, it might be that all carriers are going to have to have a combined system using GPS and some sort of network based technology. GPS works well in any spot that has a good line of sight to satellites, but won't work well otherwise (i.e. indoors and dense urban areas). Network based solutions will work indoors, and works well in urban areas but has a harder time in rural areas.

The older non-GPS phones were grandfathered in, but they did what they could to get them off the network, including what I believe was deliberate sabotage of my phone. (snip)

They probably did. Or at the very least didn't care enough about the older phones to care what effect the update had on them. They wouldn't let you start a new plan with an older phone at one point in time.

[PepperElf]

yes it's free from all phones
and if the caller hangs up they are suppose to still check it out.

back when living in an apartment, my sister said the neighbor had it happen. the neighbor's toddler had picked up the phone and hit a few buttons and one of them turned out to be the emergency button. the parents didn't even know until the cops showed up.

[Andara Bledin]

yes it's free from all phones
and if the caller hangs up they are suppose to still check it out.

Quite true.

When I was receptionist, I answered the phone more than once to emergency services inquiring if we had an emergency because one of the employees would mis-dial and then hang up instead of apologizing for the call.

And then there were the ones that would mis-dial the fax machine... and it would end up dialing 911 four times in succession... >.<

^-.-^