For many years, one of the most frequently visited sections of The Payphone Project has been the pages explaining what it means when phone numbers such as (720) 587-9978 and (404) 461-9978 show up on your caller ID.
Many people, seeing these strange and unknown numbers on their phone, type the numbers into an Internet search engine to try and trace the call or somehow figure out who called them.
The answer in the past was that the call was made using an AT&T prepaid calling card. When a call is placed using one of these calling cards, the receiving party’s Caller ID would show one of a series of numbers, but never the phone number from which the call was actually placed. For better or worse this granted the calling party a shield of anonymity.
It appears that this is changing, though. A reader of this web site (thanks, Shevas!) wrote to describe how a recent call made using an AT&T prepaid card showed the actual phone number on the receiving party’s caller ID. Having used these cards for some time Shevas (and I, for that matter) had come to expect that our actual phone number would be shielded when placing calls with AT&T calling cards.
As Shevas explains: “I used the same card about a week ago to call my house from out of town, and instead of that erroneous number showing up, the actual number I was calling from showed up instead! So I tested it from a couple of different phones, cell, land, pay, etc. and it was all the same result. The actual number showed up. I have no idea when this started happening, as I don’t usually have the
opportunity to see what number is showing up on caller ID.”
We don’t know when or why this change was implemented.
If you think your calls are being anonymized by going through one of these AT&T calling cards, think again, and test it first, because you may find that you are not as anonymous as you think.
Read more about these calling cards here