I have my cell number permanently blocked with Verizon. I know it is, because my friends complain when I call them. However, I was required to call an apartment to try to get a target, and since they didn't answer I was supposed to hang up, which I did. Well, 20 minutes later I got a call on my cell from the apartment. I was shocked! I didn't answer it, but I'm a little freaked out that*67 and permanently blocked numbers don't appear to always work.

Does anyone know if there's a way around this?

Was the apartment a toll free number? I know *67 doesn't work when calling toll free. I'm not sure about permanently blocked numbers.

That happened to me once after I hung up on the person that was not the target several times. Freaked me out too. Maybe they can simply dial *69??

The short answer is no, your number is not really blocked. It's blocked for the average person or company, but there are ways they can still read the number.

Man, I can't remember the last time *67 worked for blocking cell phone numbers. Now there is an option in most smartphones to "hide" or "show" your number. Also #31# for some companies works as well. Are you sure *67 is still working for you? Perhaps you can call Verizon and ask?

Yes, I'm sure the permanent block is on because I used my cell to call my house and vice versa to check. I also called a friend and asked her if my number came up. She said it showed as "Private caller."

Just another thought - have you called the apt complex before or one of their sister complexes? I have a friend who have "permanently" blocked her number. But since I entered her name and number into my contacts, when she calls me, her name and number show up on the screen.

I did shop this company in another city 500 miles away. Not sure if they have a shared database. But now that I think about it, I know I didn't give them my cell number when I filled out the visitor card. I use my Google Voice number for those.

Hi,

Most of the time *67 works but not all. With the mystery company Mercantile Systems they have a catering client. Their shop specifically states that *67 will not work with them. They have catering and wedding in person and phone shops in Arizona, California and other western states. Mercantile Systems will allow you multiple shops with this client but you must have a different name and phone for each shop. I believe companies can probably pay big money to see your phone number no matter what. Also with the different phone systems and providers there can be privacy leaks or complicated relationships which void this.

An example is I worked for 2 months in 2006 in a telemarketing place. It is a large nationwide company. They had us calling people with their expired credit card information available to us offering the free timeshare presentation thing. We were instructed by management not to reveal this ever. My sister worked with me. She was connected to a man physically in the Pentagon this way. He flipped out when it was explained to him. Management never said anything to my sister knowing better. It was some regional manager not the actual company. These people made nice bucks off of their tactics which could not be used by the corporation. But the corporation naturally accepted these tactics.

Privacy can be bought away or ignored by unethical practices by money hungry managers. The other way this can happen is with lack of infrastructure. Tablets and smartphone are infamous for this with the apps. Apps are not like software. Your privacy can be accessed by any lowlife on the streets with decent programming skills. Also remember the social media privacy leaks with Twitter and Facebook.

While I am not preaching we can be seen everywhere at all times please do not expect privacy or anonymity ever anywhere.

Does your google voice ring through to your cell phone?

Mine does. If I don't answer, it goes to voicemail. And darn the cell phone, it gives my cell number out as part of the recording! So the one shop I did, giving them my google voice number, allowed the client to retrieve my real number.

The client did leave a messages - one on my cell phone and one on my google voicemail. I haven't used google voice since.

(I don't totally understand how google voice works. I remember being shocked to see a call from the client coming through on my cell phone when I had never used my cell phone to call them and I had given ONLY my google voice number. Maybe the same thing happened to you?)

Why don't you just change the outgoing message on your cell phone instead of using the default that states the number?

It's not much of a consideration since my son & I share the cell phone.

At the time, the way I understood google voice was that it would receive the call, flash something on my computer screen to notify me, and if I didn't take the call, it would go to voicemail on the computer. I had no idea at the time, that the call would actually be transferred to my cell.

Google Voice doesn't send the call to my cell phone or anywhere else. I just use it as its own voicemail, with the outgoing message, in my voice, saying I'm not available and please leave a message. (I don't give a name). I get a copy of the message in my email as both a recording and a transcript. I never hear the phone ring and couldn't answer it if I wanted to!

@sandrapdunne wrote:

Tablets and smartphone are infamous for this with the apps. Apps are not like software. Your privacy can be accessed by any lowlife on the streets with decent programming skills.

And with a rooted Android phone, you can take back all of your privacy from every app. You can present the app with an empty phonebook, random GPS data, and garbage data for anything the app demands. Rooting an Android can be as simple as holding a few buttons when turning it on to running some special software on your computer while connected with USB cable.

Once your rooted, you can install apps that can modify the phone beyond the "allowed" interface with the operating system and do things like what I mentioned in the above paragraph. You can even replace the entire OS with a clean one that has all the carrier and company installed apps removed such as [wiki.cyanogenmod.org].

If your lucky to have a device that is officially supported by Cyanogenmod, then this is by far the best way to gain your security back as it has the ability to block apps from doing anything by default.

If your phone is not supported by this replacement Android firmware, you still have options if your phone can be rooted.
There are guides and several methods to root a phone depending on the manufacturer and model. Once this is done, you will have an app called SuperUser installed. Go to [forum.xda-developers.com] and locate the sub forum for your model and there will be a guide for dummies to do this for all the major phones.

Then install the Xposed Framework: [www.addictivetips.com]

Now you can modify the phone in many ways by installing Xposed modules. They can change the fundamental behavior of the phone and do things that Google is not pleased with such as lying to apps about privacy data and allowing them to run without giving out your information to the app. and blocking banner ads within apps to name just a few things.

There are two privacy modules that will complety block an apps access to anything that you want to block and send false data even are:

AppOpsXposed: Very basic and allows you to turn an apps access abilities on and off in system settings with simple toggles.

XPrivacy: This interactively runs and if an app tries to gather any data or access your phone/tablet in any way, you get a warning screen popup and you can allow or deny it and it will remember this rule from that point on. You can set the privileges of each app separately.

Yeah, this sounds really hard. It's not if you take a little time to read the links I provided.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/2015 10:05AM by scanman1.

And if you're not very technologically savvy you can turn your $700 phone into a paperweight pretty easily.

That's what ticks me off when I install an app. I see the 'permissions' and often, I will not install the app. They want too much information and why? So I can play a game? Not doing it.

x



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2015 12:10AM by MDavisnowell.

I can tell you that using *67 with Orkin (which has a toll-free number) does not work. They identified me and blocked me from calling them! Now I get instantly routed to "all our agent are busy, please call again." The MSC did not believe me. Golly, just ask Orkin!

Scanman, you just hurt my brains! (what's left of them)

@bgriffin wrote:

And if you're not very technologically savvy you can turn your $700 phone into a paperweight pretty easily.

This used to be the case before. Now the tools are automated and have checks in place so you don't brick your phone.
However, there is always some risk in rooting and flashing your phone. The rewards and abilities far outweigh the risk IMHO. If your afraid to do it, find a teenager tech and offer them a small payment and they can do it for you.

Your average 14-16 year old can do this in less than 30 minutes. Yes, thats just the way it is.

myst4u, Orkin called me out once too. The agent was like, I see you have called before. I denied it and we proceeded with the call. No one mentioned it until the 5th call, though. Oh, those awkward moments when you know they know, and they know you know that they know. I haven't noticed those coming around again, and I won't be applying if they do. I did tell the MSC what happened and that *67 wasn't working, and I felt like they didn't believe me.

*67 is meaningless on toll free numbers. They are paying for the call and will receive the caller information through a different method than caller ID. Big business also can receive your caller id and can spoof the caller id information when they make calls by sending false information to the central office.

Businesses usually order telephone lines over what is referred to as a T1 line. This two pair twisted circuit is multiplexed into 24 separate 64K channels. They then use a signaling called ISDN-PRI. This allows for 23 voice calls and the last channel is the D-channel or signaling channel. They receive the caller information during the call setup process on this channel. It is provided by what is called SS7 signaling and has nothing to do with the caller ID data signal that is sent over an analog line between the first and second ring.

Yes, I worked for the telecommunications industry as a central office technician and fiber transport tech. for over 19 years.

Scanman - I really appreciate your explanations. I generally understand what you are saying and find it very interesting.

I find it amazing that the MSC's don't understand about using *67 on a toll-free number. Like MPorter3112, I was basically called a lier by the MSC when I reported that I could no longer call them. The first time that something strange happened, the CSR asked for my name, and then asked me who xxxxxxx (that being a name I had used previously). I said that I had no idea. The CSR then said to put xxxxxx on the line, and I said that I was the only one there and my name was yyyyyyyy. She hung up on me and my phone number was blocked thereafter. I ran out of other numbes to use, then the problems with the MSC began.

Wouldn't you thik that Orkin (and other large companies) understand how their phone system works, and would tell the MSC to only permit one phone call per calling phone number?

The thing is, that now I can't call Orkin when I need an exterminator. I have to call their competition.

Well now, the people won't stop calling me! They're calling me by name and leaving messages. I still haven't got through to the target, and I'm concerned that since this is an apartment shop, once I give them my name when I'm there, they'll know it's me. Fortunately I only called once from my cell phone, and if pushed, I can say I got another important call just as they answered and had to hang up. I did call 3x from my home phone, although they haven't called me back on that phone. I really don't know how this is going to go down. I think I'll call from a friend's phone for my next attempt. (This MSC requires you make NINE attempts before asking for the target. So far I'm only up to 5, but I already have permission from the scheduler to ask for her when she 's scheduled to work again.