Hoaxes On The Internet

5. 90# Phone Scam - Partly Verified

Summary
Typical Letter Contents
Support/Verification
How To Handle Valid Warnings

Summary
If someone calls claiming to test your phone, and asks you to press 9, 0 and then #, they are attempting to gain control of your telephone system.

Typical Letter Contents

The information below was forwarded to me and I share it with you just in case!

SUBJECT: PHONE SCAM

I received a telephone call from an individual identifying himself as an AT&T Service Technician who was conducting a test on our telephone lines. He stated that to complete the test we should touch nine (9), zero (0), the pound sign (#) and then hang up.

Luckily, we were suspicious and refused. Upon contacting the telephone Company we were informed that by pushing 90# you give the requesting individual full access to your telephone line, which allows them to place a long distance telephone calls billed to your home phone number. We were further informed that this scam has been originating from many of the local jails and prisons. I have also verified this information with UCB Telecomm.

Please beware. This sounds like an Urban Legend - IT IS NOT!!! I further called GTE Security this morning and verified that this is definitely possible. DO NOT press 90# for ANYONE. The GTE Security department requested that I share this information with EVERYONE I KNOW!!!

Could you PLEASE pass this on. If you have mailing lists and/or newsletters from organizations you are connected with, I encourage you to pass on this information.

Support/Verification

Here's what I did:

  1. I was unable to find out through the Internet.
  2. I called AT&T. I was transferred to a supervisor, who transferred me to AT&T Corporate Security.
  3. An AT&T Corporate Security Employee verified that on some phone systems, pressing 9, 0, and pound, then hanging up, will give control of your phone line to the person on the other side of your original call.

How to handle valid warnings

So, this brings up a good question: What do you do with a chain email that is validated by a reputable resource? Do you send it to everybody you know?

I think you need to consider the value of propogating valid information on a case by case basis. Is it important enough to merit sending to other people? Just because people can steal credit card numbers from the trash doesn't mean I'm going to write an email about it requiring that EVERYBODY KNOW ABOUT IT!

Here's another point. Once you tell someone that "your friend" validated it and they forward it on, it quickly becomes "a friend of a friend of a friend". Hey, the President of the United States of America is a friend of a friend of a friend, but you don't see me lunching at the White House! My point is that if you yourself validate a piece of information, a couple of iterations down the Internet 'pike it becomes just another piece of spam.

Don't forget that a partly validated warning is as much a piece of spam as an invalid one. Both do a good job of clogging up Internet conduits and provide very little value in the end.

What would I do with something like this?

Personally, I'm going to do the same thing with this warning as I've done with all the others: nothing (besides put it on the website). There is too much misinformation travelling around the Internet for me to consider using it as an effective medium to circulate a valid warning - if it were important enough in the first place!

One problem is that the form of a valid warning is so much like an invalid hoax--even, unfortunately, in claiming not to be a hoax--that many savvy readers would simply discount it outright, making it that much less valuable to send around.

If you are compelled to forward the email

If you must send the warning on here are a couple of things you should do:

  1. Make it clear to your recipients that they do not need to send it to everybody they know. You can inform people withut panicking them.
  2. Rewrite the email. Clean it up. Reformat the paragraphs and remove all the extra occurences of > >. But make sure that any quoted statements remain quoted--don't leave them in the first person unless they're really statements from you. In general, be the source of the information if you can, and don't appear to be if you're not.
  3. Supply a verifiable source of information for those people down the line who may eventually read your warning. This website, for example, serves as such a source. You can point them here or at other reputable information sites. Another great way to establish your email warning's credibility is to include the simple verification procedure for readers to follow themselves.

All in all, If you're willing to accept responsibility for the information, then accept full responsibility for it.

(Thanks to Mark Jackman, once again, for great editing.)

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