Far out, Martin, or as hip farmers say, farm out!
Phil.
K0NX
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin G. McCormick" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2015 9:01 PM
Subject: Re: Before There Was Caller I D
> I did exactly the same thing in the early nineties
> shortly after I started working for OSU's IT center. I got
> a spam message from something called "Fortune5000" with a
> toll-free number which I called to complain about the spam.
>
> When you called Fortune5000, you had to first listen to
> a prerecorded bit of babble from some guy whose last name was
> Michaels. You then got to talk to a live representative who
> would reel you in. When I called to bellyache, Michaels, himself
> answered. I told him in no uncertain terms that I did not
> appreciate commercial advertising messages and that he shouldn't
> be doing this at all. Bozo hung up on me which made me mad as a
> hornet.
>
> For the next 3 or 4 days, I called Fortune5000 on
> several lines and conferenced them together so the
> representatives ended up talking to each other and wondering why
> this was happening.
>
> They never heard my voice at all but one day, one of the
> reps said, "We need to tell Mr. Michaels our phones are all
> messed up again."
>
> I felt happy hoping that he would maybe call his
> telephone company and they would check everything out and decide
> he was an idiot.
>
> Should I have done this? Of course not. Was it childish?
> You bet. Do I feel bad? Absolutely not. This was some kind of
> multilevel marketing scam and I have no idea what eventually
> happened to Bozo Michaels who didn't even show one bit of
> remorse for spamming half the internet.
>
> What he saw would have been several calls from Oklahoma
> State University's outdial trunks which all had a single number
> that could have been any one of ten-thousand possible telephones
> on the campus. Unless one did something really stupid such as
> threaten violence, the odds of anything happening were extremely
> small.
>
> Soon after, OSU upgraded it's outdials and Caller ID
> began showing actual extension numbers. When spammers were
> especially brazen, I would go to pay telephones on occasion and
> jerk their chains a bit.
>
> Ah, the good old days when you could actually tell where
> the spam was coming from and really be as much of a pest as they
> were.
>
> Martin WB5AGZ
>
> Dave Allen writes:
>> Hi Phil!
>>
>> Ten years later, I took a leaf out of your book.
>>
>> Do you remember the World Tomorrow Program? They had a big call center
>> that
>> took orders for all of Garner Ted's books and tapes, etc. They had a toll
>> free number, and I had 3-way calling so I couldn't resist the
>> possibility.
>>
>> I called once, then went to three way and quickly had the two calls
>> conferenced at the right timing.
>
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