A misdialed call or wrong number is a telephone call or text message to an incorrect telephone number. This may occur because the number has been physically misdialed, the number is simply incorrect, or because the area code or ownership of the number has changed. In North America, toll-free numbers are a frequent source of wrong numbers because they often have a history of prior ownership. [1] In the United Kingdom, many misdialed calls have been due to public confusion over the dialing codes for some areas. [2] [3]
The recipient of a wrong number is usually unknown to the caller. This aspect has been used in social science experiments designed to study the willingness of people to help strangers, and the extent to which this is affected by characteristics such as race. This experimental method is known as the "wrong-number technique". [4]
The Emily Post Institute recommends that the recipient of a text message to a misdialed number respond with, "Sorry, wrong number." [5] A fraud expert recommends not responding or engaging at all with messages from unknown numbers, to avoid text message scams that start with an innocent-looking message from a stranger. [6]
On a landline, wrong numbers incur no toll for the recipient but do represent the annoyance of answering an unwanted call. This may be problematic for shift workers who are asleep during the day. On cellphones in countries where mobile plans charge for incoming calls, a wrong number may cost the subscriber one or more minutes.
Sources of misdialled calls are similar to sources of typographical error:
The use of local telephone numbers in mainstream fictional works is problematic as the number will often belong to one or more real subscribers in various other area codes. Well-known fictional numbers like 867-5309 (Jenny's number, from a popular 1982 song) and 776-2323 (God's number in the 2003 cinema release of Bruce Almighty ) continue to receive misdialled calls years later.
This is often avoided by using reserved or invalid numbers (such as 555 (telephone number)), or by displaying a real area code and number which belongs to the publisher of the fictional work.
Inadvertent calls to emergency telephone numbers are problematic as, if the dispatcher is uncertain of the nature of a presumed emergency, police are rapidly dispatched to the address on an enhanced 9-1-1 or 1-1-2 call. [7] Most often, these calls tie up resources which need to be available for emergency response - especially if the caller is silent or disconnects the call without acknowledging the error. In Raleigh, North Carolina, a 2012 change which forced subscribers to dial the 919 area code on local calls caused a 20% increase in total calls to 9-1-1, a result of frequent misdials. [8]
Misdialled calls are problematic for toll-free telephone number subscribers, who must pay long-distance tolls to receive the calls and pay staff to answer misdirected enquiries. A small, local business whose toll-free number differs in one digit from a large national franchise will typically receive multiple misdialled calls daily.
In some cases, commercial rivals have engaged in wilful typosquatting to profit from misdial traffic. If 1-800-HOLIDAY (+1-800-465-4329) is Holiday Inn, an unscrupulous vendor could register 1-800-H0LIDAY (+1-800-405-4329, the same number with 'o' replaced by 'zero'), resell bookings for rooms in the same or a rival hotel and collect a profitable travel agent's commission. [9]
Some franchise chains have resorted to the defensive registration of complementary numbers, the commonly misdialled variants of their main number, as a defense against the typosquatters.
A similar issue exists with toll-free number hoarding. One marketer can create multiple shell companies to operate as RespOrgs and register toll-free numbers as soon as their previous users disconnect service. Callers to millions of these numbers are connected not to the desired party but to an advertisement, such as the PrimeTel Communications promotions for costly phone sex numbers. [10] By tying up millions of easily remembered numbers, these schemes force businesses to use overlay plan area codes or numbers without mnemonic phonewords.
Deployment of multiple toll-free area codes further increases the probability of misdial calls as a common wrong number pattern is to call the +1-800- version of a number which is actually in another area code. In 2009, General Motors advertised +1-877-CLUNKER (1-877-258-6537) to promote a $3 billion U.S. federal "cash for clunkers" program. Judy Van Fossan of The Flower Corner in Clinton, Illinois, a tiny local shop which owned 1-800-CLUNKER (+1-800-258-6537), was inundated with more than 150 wrong numbers daily. [11] As of 2013, this florist is advertising a local number only; [12] as the vehicle scrappage program ended in 2009, the abandoned +1-800/888/877 CLUNKER phonewords are now typosquatted as Primetel numbers. [13]
While prohibitions on hoarding, brokering and warehousing numbers exist both in the US (under FCC regulations) and Australia (under ACMA) enforcement has been non-existent except in the most egregious cases, such as registering distinctive phone-words (like +1-800-RED-CROSS) in order to attempt to sell or lease the numbers to the named organization or its local chapters. [14]
In the 2020s, mobile phone spammers have used ostensibly misdirected text messages to attract pig butchering scam victims. A con artist sends out a large number of apparently innocent messages to a large number of people. When a person responds saying that the message was sent in error, the con artist apologizes, then introduces themselves, and begins a long con to gain the text recipient's confidence. Between late 2021 and mid-2022, the FBI estimates that text message scams had cost 244 victims a total of US$42.7 million to cryptocurrency fraud. [15] Some wrong-number text message scammers are forced laborers in Southeast Asia. [16]
Misdialled calls serve as a plot device in 1948 film Sorry, Wrong Number , in television such as in the Dad's Army episode "Sorry, Wrong Number" and in the Seinfeld episode "The Pool Guy". They are also used on the Touch-Tone Terrorists prank call CD series. They also figure in the name of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number top-down action game by Dennaton Games.
An emergency telephone number is a number that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assistance. The emergency number differs from country to country; it is typically a three-digit number so that it can be easily remembered and dialed quickly. Some countries have a different emergency number for each of the different emergency services; these often differ only by the last digit.
The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the telephone country code 1. Some North American countries, most notably Mexico, do not participate in the NANP.
Automatic number identification (ANI) is a feature of a telecommunications network for automatically determining the origination telephone number on toll calls for billing purposes. Automatic number identification was originally created by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) for long distance service in the Bell System, eliminating the need for telephone operators to manually record calls.
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.
In telecommunications, directory assistance or directory inquiries is a phone service used to find out a specific telephone number and/or address of a residence, business, or government entity.
A Zenith number was a telephone service in the United States that allowed a calling party to call the service subscriber at no charge by requesting the name Zenith and the number from a switchboard operator. The service preceded the system of toll-free telephone numbers with area code 800 in the United States. Similar services used the names "Enterprise" or "WX" number.
A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, reachable by a system of destination code routing. Telephone numbering plans are defined in each of the administrative regions of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and in private telephone networks.
The area code 868 is assigned to Trinidad and Tobago, a member of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). The telephone numbering plan for the country is known as the National Numbering Plan. It is part of a system used for assigning telephone numbers in Trinidad and Tobago, and functions as a part of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). It is regulated by the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago, which holds responsibility for telecommunications in the country.
Numbers on the Irish telephone numbering plan are regulated and assigned to operators by ComReg.
Area code 246 is the telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for Barbados. The sequence 246 spells BIM on an alpha-numeric telephone keypad, a nickname for the island.
The dialling plan for mobile networks and new landline operators is closed; all subscriber numbers must be dialled in full. For landline numbers starting with 02, the dialling plan used to be open; the trunk digit and area code could be omitted if the caller was in the same area code as the callee. However, starting May 3, 2008, all landline numbers must be dialled in full.
The New Zealand telephone numbering plan describes the allocation of telephone numbers in New Zealand and the Pitcairn Islands.
Phonewords are mnemonic phrases represented as alphanumeric equivalents of a telephone number. In many countries, the digits on the telephone keypad also have letters assigned. By replacing the digits of a telephone number with the corresponding letters, it is sometimes possible to form a whole or partial word, an acronym, abbreviation, or some other alphanumeric combination.
The area code 671 is the local telephone area code of the United States territory of Guam. It was created with the beginning of permissive dialing on July 1, 1997, replacing Guam's previous International Telecommunication Union country code 671 at the end of permissive dialing on July 1, 1998.
Telephone numbers in Canada follow the fixed-length format of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) of a three-digit area code, a three-digit central office code, and a four-digit station or line code. This is represented as NPA NXX XXXX.
A telephone number in Belgium is a sequence of nine or ten digits dialed on a telephone to make a call on the Belgian telephone network. Belgium is under a full number dialing plan, meaning that the full national number must be dialed for all calls, while it retains the trunk code, '0', for all national dialling.
National conventions for writing telephone numbers vary by country. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) publishes a recommendation entitled Notation for national and international telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web addresses. Recommendation E.123 specifies the format of telephone numbers assigned to telephones and similar communication endpoints in national telephone numbering plans.
A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices for data transmission via the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or other public and private networks.
Toll-free telephone numbers in the North American Numbering Plan have the area code prefix 800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, and 888. Additionally, area codes 822, 880 through 887, and 889 are reserved for toll-free use in the future. 811 is excluded because it is a special dialing code in the group NXX for various other purposes.
Somos, Inc., is a company that manages registry databases for the telecommunications industry. Additionally, since January 1, 2019, the company has been the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, under a contract granted by the Federal Communications Commission.
| Types | |
|---|---|
| Accessories | |
| Connectivity | |
| Calls | |
| Applications | |
