Has My Cell Number Been Cloned?

2bepissedoff asks: "According to my T-mobile phone bill, I have been receiving incoming calls from a 'NBR unavailable', since February, with talk time ranging from 1 minute to an hour. The strangest thing is, I have never received these calls (my phone doesn't ring and I haven't talked to the caller). I only started noticing them when my phone bill was charged over $40 more than my regular bill. Of course, I have a family plan (2 people only, 2 lines) and I talked to my partner. The answer: he too had not received any of these calls, especially over 300 minutes per month of them. We called up T-mobile twice and claim the possibility of phone cloning. Both representatives hung up on me, thinking I was trying to con them or something. Any advice to what this could be?"

I did a little investigation and I've noticed that some of the NBR minutes overlap with calls I actually make. For example:

'2/22 at 3:28 pm "NBR unavailable" 17mins usage.
2/22 at 3:44 pm "-(# I made)---" 3mins usage.

So if you add up the time 3:28pm + 17 mins = 3:45 pm. The time when I made my call was at 3:44 pm. This reoccurs several times. I still do not think this is enough evidence to convince T-mobile of Phone Cloning. So I am thinking of switching either my number or my service provider. "

You get charged for receiving calls?

[silasthehobbit]

Oh dear God!

My phone bill would be hundreds of pounds a month - rather than the £15-£20 it normally is - if this happened in the UK. Over here, we get charged for making calls from our mobiles (cell phones), but the person calling my mobile is the one who gets charged for ringing me - I don't get charged for that unless I'm in a different country.

How come American consumers haven't risen up and complained about this? It seems a bit of a rip off to me.

--
silas

Fair Credit Billing Act

[Kagato]

Simple writing a formal letter of dispute under as defined by the Fair Credit Billing Act. Send said letter to the billing dispute address (usually on the back of your statement.) Indicate the calls you do not beleive you made, and the adjustment you beleive you deserve. If T-Mobile does not reply, IN WRITING, to your dispute they automatically lose the right to collect $50 or the disputed fee. Which ever is less. Make sure to send in Payment for the portion you do beleive you owe. I suggest spending the extra couple bucks to get delivery confirmation.

If they do not comply, file a formal complaint with the FTC and your state AG office.

Similar problem = months in hell

[kiscica]

I had a similar problem with AT&T Wireless a long time ago (ca. 1998), when they first introduced their "one-rate" service (no extra charges for long distance or roaming, a major innovation back then). For about three months, every single call I made or received appeared twice on my bill: once listed under the actual time I made or received it, and once listed precisely three hours later. That is, for every 17-minute call at 8:53, say, there'd be a corresponding 17-minute call at 11:53. I immediately recognized that this had to have something to do with the fact that I was using a phone with a New York number in California (three-hour time difference). The net result was close to a thousand dollars in overage charges -- while I was careful to keep all my usage under the 1500 minutes per month included in my plan, I was getting charged for more like 3000 minutes at a ridiculous overage rate of 25 cents a minute.

The first month the problem showed up I thought it would be a quick fix -- obviously no rational human being could think that I was studiously duplicating every single one of my hundreds of calls exactly three hours apart.

Silly me.

I went through eight months of hell trying to get an AT&T representative to acknowledge there was a problem. I must have made at least 100 calls, sent numerous faxes and letters, and spoken to at least 20 different "supervisors" -- they kept "disappearing," forcing me to start telling the story all over again each time I called.

To a man/woman, they all kept insisting that if the calls appeared on my bill, I had to have made them (since we all know computerized billing systems never have bugs). Until the very end I never got a single one of them to admit that there just MIGHT be a problem if every single one of my hundreds of calls appeared precisely twice, 3 hours apart, on each bill. No, I simply had to have made those calls, there was no other explanation.

Naturally were flatly unwilling to refund the overage charges which, as I mentioned, reached almost $1000 by the third bill. (I didn't cancel the service because I was dependent on it - it was my only phone line, there was no number portability back then, no other service offered "free" roaming/LD which I needed as a New Yorker stuck in California). They did agree to let me pay only the non-disputed charge until the dispute process was over, but soon started sending me dunning letters anyway.

The problem stopped happening after the third month, but I spent most of the rest of the year trying to get them to reverse the excess charges. It was hell, no other word for it. It wasn't the prospect of having to pay a thousand dollars that scared and angered me, it was the simple fact that a large and respected (!) company like AT&T obviously had a policy for its customer support people that went "no matter how obvious it is that the customer is right, you must insist that he is wrong." I don't see how any rational person could fail to recognize that what happened was a massive computer billing error, but as I mentioned before, I never got *anyone* to admit it. By the end, my conversations with them were so psychologically draining that I was starting to wonder if it really could be my mistake somehow.

The very end of the saga -- eight months later - was that I finally managed to talk to a manager who agreed there was a problem, told me that many others had experienced it, and canceled all the excess charges, just like that. So, basically, they'd known all along that there was a problem. and just kept stonewalling in the hopes that I'd break down and pay them.

That experience marked the end of my innocence about big, respectable business. In a very real sense, I "grew up" over those 8 months.

Re:I've had this problem also..

[Finque]

A properly trained front-end employee will hand over an unsatisfied (and unruly) customer to a manager ASAP. A manager is specially trained to handle situations like that. The GP took the quick road to getting results - no cell store wants someone screaming about their service, they could lose potential customers. I've watched managers bend over backwards for someone who's screaming.

Besides, by working at a place where you deal with the public, you basically agree to be yelled at.

Speak to tech support

[crashbumper]

I used to work in the cell phone business, and here is an easy way to have them check for cloning. Speak with technical support, and have them check which towers you are pulling service from when these calls occur. If you make a call at 3:28pm connected to a tower in Los Angeles, and then 15 minutes later it says you are connected to a tower in San Diego; that is proof enough something weird is happening. Just highlight all these questionable calls on your bill, then ask to have the calls just before and jjust after checked to see which towers are in use.

Depends on where you live

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The BBB is a national organization but their local operations have a bizarre amount of autonomy.

I got a settlement from a car dealer after just a couple of phone calls after contacting my own local BBB branch. Some of them do work like they're supposed to.

I had issues with T-Mobile...

[mosch]

I had some problems where they sold me a phone with a $100 rebate that didn't exist in their system.

I got resolution by:
a) Writing a letter to the president of customer service (Sorry, I don't seem to have the name and address on this computer.)
b) Complaining to the BBB

They wound up crediting my account with the $100 rebate twice, once for each method of complaint. I didn't stop them, because I figured it was just compensation for the absurd amount of time it took to get it all sorted.

I got better efforts out of customer service by walking into a local T-Mobile store, where I'd purchased the phone, and asking the sales representatives to assist me with my issue, but those efforts got no results.

Sad, but true

[blueZ3]

It's very annoying, but it seems like the only way to get problems resolved anymore is to act like a jerk.

I've had a couple of experiences where being reasonable and polite got me nowhere with customer service, but when I got frustrated at the end of the conversation (after being told several times "there's nothing we can do") and basically gave them and their manager hell over the problem, it got resolved ("OK sir, we'll send out a replacement right away").

The most frustrating thing about this (to me) is that I don't want to have to be an ass to get a problem fixed. In fact, I go out of my way to do business with companies that fix the problem the first time when I come and politely ask for assistance. I don't recall this being the case in my younger years, but that may be more a result of my memory than an actual decline in customer service.

I'm skeptical - T-Mobile service is great

[PCM2]

The fact that this guy/gal is saying the T-Mobile reps hung up is what makes me skeptical of this whole story.

I know you almost never hear a statement like this about any company -- which is why I'm going to come out and say it -- but I've actually been nothing but satisfied with the customer service at T-Mobile. I've had to call numerous times, for various reasons, and the rep on the phone has invariably been extremely courteous.

I think I can count one occasion where the person I spoke to didn't really seem to understand what was going on and I ended the call without getting much satisfaction. I called back later with the same problem, spoke to someone else, and got the problem resolved. All the other times I was escalated to the level of support that could help me with my problem with no fuss, quickly and politely. I've even been handed off for second-level support to RIM for my Blackberry when it was necessary; nobody even gave me the slightest hard time. And they always, always thank me for my business -- sometimes the dumb little things count.

Another time I noticed an instant messaging charge on my bill that seemed out of place (I get unlimited SMS). Instead of getting mad, I just wrote up a quick e-mail on their Web site stating plainly that I thought the charge was erroneous and I'd like it reversed (please). A few days later I got an e-mail back saying, sure enough, they decided it was a mistaken charge, were reversing it, and were giving me 20 free anytime minutes also. No problem.

So I'm extremely skeptical about this whole story. T-Mobile hasn't been winning J.D. Power customer support awards for nothing. For two different reps to actually hang up on somebody tells me that either A.) somebody called up, screaming and yelling irrationally and refusing to take any kind of due process to address the issue; or B.) somebody's making up a story for some reason.

(Of course, it could be possible that the submitter is talking about T-Mobile in Europe, which I can't speak to.)

Re:switching the number won't work

[julesh]

In UK, if we recieve am abusive call, calling the phone company will not be any help. They will rightly ask you to contact the police first, and they will work with the police to resolve the matter.

Actually, BT has a department that customers can call if they're receiving abusive calls that offers advice about how to deal with them, and actively encourages people to call them before the police. I suspect other phone companies handle it in a similar manner.

EVERY phone system has problems like this.

[Valdrax]

I work for one of the top 5 American cell phone providers specifically in the department that maintains the billing system. This is the suite of systems that go from switch records to taxed and formatted bills to be sent off to the printing houses (as well as roamer records to be shipped off to other providers, records for partners, etc.)

Let me tell you something you may not realize -- all of these systems have bugs. Some of them are horrible bugs. Bugs like ringtones getting double-taxed or calls getting billed when you ring a number but don't get an answer with absolutely no way to tell the difference between a legit call and a call that didn't answer.

Some of these bugs are due to flaws within the billing system. Some are bugs in the switch data (the absolute worst kind because there's no good way to filter the data when good and bad records are all marked up the same). Some are tables screw ups that lead to entire bills getting mangled. Some of these bugs get caught by the bill checking department and others may go for months without being noticed until a customer complains.

"Number unavailable" calls are most likely from records that were sent to the billing system with no other party number populated (or populated with some default "we don't know what this is" value). Our system simply replaces the other number with your own number and keeps going. Other providers probably cover for it in some other way as well.

What you have may in fact be legit phone calls that had mangled or incomplete switch records or records from the inter-carrier clearinghouse. Alternately, you may have junk data that you don't deserve to be billed for. It's all up how your company handles such complaints on what to do with about it. I know that my company frequently requests us to go find how many customers were affected and by how much so that we can either strip records from the bills and rerun them or go back and credit the customers proactively. We always try to err on the side of underbilling rather than overbilling customers because it's better to lose some money up front and give customers a pleasant surprise rather than after a nasty lawsuit with all the bad publicity.

However, if T-Mobile hangs up on you, that just isn't right. Call them up and simply say that you'd like to dispute the charges and have their billing team investigate where the records came from. That'll probably lead to a bug report being filed somewhere in their bureaucracy and a fix for you and others having the same problem. If they give you crap, then switch providers. It's not like there aren't multiple GSM service providers in the US now.

Re:I'm skeptical - T-Mobile service is great

[jedidiah]

I dunno. I've gotten excellent customer service from t-mobile in the UK but any time I've interacted with their people in the US I've wanted to strangle someone afterwards.

Re:Similar problem = Cingular

[Trojan35]

I was billed for 350 text messages in the span of 2 minutes. I called and told her I didn't do that and wanted the $35 refunded. She said "it's in the system." I pointed out that it was physically impossible for anyone to send that many text messages in 2 minutes and that I had used text messaging 0 times in the year i'd been with Cingular. Her response? "Computers don't make mistakes."

Maybe I was a little harsh: "You're an idiot. I'm cancelling my account not because of Cingular's service or this charge, but because you ma'am, are an idiot." The cancellation rep tried to convince me to stay and generously offered to cut the charges in half... "I shouldn't have to negotiate how much I pay you for your mistake. How about you refund the full amount and then pay me $100 in consulting fees for the hour I've spent identifying bugs in your system?" Then came the offer of a full refund, and I still cancelled.

Re:switching the number won't work

[SenseiLeNoir]

Well, contacting the company they may be able to resolve the immeadiate problem of the bills, and issue a replacement SIM. The can only deal with abuse of the system, but not with a crime. Only the authorities can do that.

Here is a good example of a call I did very recently with T-Mobile, and BT. I started recieving abusive calls on both my Mobile, and my landline, with an anonymous number. I reported to both companies, who noted down the call, and ensured that evidence will be kept. then they asked me to contact the police with my details to take it further. They were unable to tell me who was doing it, without police intervention. hey both offered to change my number if I wished.

I contacted the police, and as part of the investigation, the POlice authorised a line monitor on both my lane line and my mobile, as well as records on the lines. I was then contacted by BT and T-Mobile seperately explaining how the line monitor works.

in some cases, BT may be able to respond to certain abuses quicker directly, as they own the entire network, including the lines going into your house. But with regard to a crime (which is what cloning/makign abusive calls are) they refer you to the police as well.

PS. I dont understand what part of my original post is "flamebait", as someone has modded it.

Re:A few things

[jimwelch]

Clonning can still happen. It can be done by employees of a cell phone repair service. Many in the USA are "independents" or one/two man shops. They have the equipment, training, and modivation (profit).

Re:Seems Wrong.. Cell phones work in airplanes...

[Anonymous Coward]

So explain the cell phone calls from flight 93 on 9-11-2001 then!

I Had a Similar Problem

[popo]

I had a similar problem involving T-Mobile "T-Zones". While idle, my phone
was apparently contacting T-Zones. In fact, once in a while I'd 'catch' it
making an (autonomous) one minute T-Zones connection (because the phone
would light up).

Since I wasn't a T-Zones subscriber, T-Mobile billed me for each and every
connection, even though the connections were happening 'automatically'.

For the first few months I didn't notice it because I was on the road and
running up massive phone bills anyway, but by the time I realized what was
going on, I was $5,000 in the hole. It took months of phone calls to customer
service for them to even acknowlege that there was a problem. I even made a
short video of my phone 'turning itself on and connecting to T-Zones'.

I will say, that T-Mobile ended up being great, and clearing my bill of
all the charges, but only after 50 or so calls to CS.

Total nightmare.

Re:I've had this problem also..

[doughrama]

Seriously, being an ass doesn't always get you what you want. In my previous life where I did tech support for an ISP, I would only offer the bare minimum (at best) of help for the assholes that called in. However, if you were pleasant I'd bend over backwards doing everything I could (including bending/breaking policy) for you. In fact I became so aware of my attitude and actions towards the different types of customers I had to deal with that I decided to try being overly nice to see if it was easy to get my way. turns out, it *almost* always works... And sometimes it's super fun! And sometimes the people you talk to are just dicks and nothing is gonna work.

My favorite CSR story happened a long time ago when I had a dial-up account... I didn't pay the bill for three months and they shut off the account. So I called up Earthlink (I think) to pay the bill in full and get the account turned back on. I was unemployed at the time so money was tight. In any case I talked to the tech support guy, being very nice and polite the entire time. For whatever reason he was apparently having a bad day and decided that he was going to take it out on me. I kept my composure, and just rebuffed his attitude towards me by continuing to be nice. As I was getting the billing straightened out, he told me that they had a $40 (I think) reconnect fee. Having been in the dial-up ISP business previously (not with this ISP though,) I was totally confident that waiving the re-connect fee was entirely up to the CSR. Keep in mind, this CSR had had an attitude with me this entire time up to this point. So I asked him "Would you please waive the reconnect fee?" You could hear the devilish joy in his voice as he prepared to smack me down "What is the reason that your reconnect fee should be waived?" He was sooo excited when he asked me that because he knew I didn't have a good reason, I simply didn't pay the bill and he was more than ready to tell me no. So rather than get pissed, like I wanted to (it was like he was taunting me,) I decided to go for it and say the stupidest thing ever. "Because I'm a nice guy." There was a rather long pause as his attitude shifted from an evil glee to astonishment. He said, with an extremely condescending tone, "You want me to waive the reconnect fee because you're a nice guy?" I almost burst out laughing, having suddenly realized the ridiculousness of my request. I paused for half a moment and simply said "Yes." I judged the situation slightly wrong though, turns out this CSR didn't have full discretion over the reconnect fee like I had at my old job. My response wasn't on his script so he couldn't say yes or no - he had to get permission from his supervisor. This was like the greatest revenge ever, considering his treatment towards me. With an irritated, but confident tone he said "I'll have to go talk to my supervisor about this, please hold." and off he went. I sat on my end just reveling in the whole mess, I was ruining this guy day by simply being nice and polite, and the harder he tried to ruin my day the worse his was getting. A couple minutes goes by he gets back on the phone. Totally indignant, he proceeds to tell me "We're going to go ahead and reconnect the account, along with waiving the fee. We are ONLY GOING TO DO THIS, THIS ONCE. WE WILL NEVER WAIVE THE FEE FOR YOU AGAIN!" The volume and authority in his voice went way up in the last bit, he finally got his little opportunity to inflict what pain he could on me. I said "ok, thanks." And that was it.

Had I gotten all pissy and demanded I speak to a supervisor I for sure would've been shutdown down one way or another, by being nice I got to have a lot of fun and get my way.

Re:I've had this problem also..

[toleraen]

The GP took the quick road to getting results

Huh. Last time I walked into a sprint store to drop my service and take care of some weird billing, I just walked up to a sales rep and asked to speak with a manager about account issues I was having. They walked me over to the manager, and I got things taken care of. All without making myself look like a total jackass! It's amazing what being a decent person gets you every once in a while.

Unknown calls are bullshit

[TibbonZero]

Ok, so the phone company acts as if they don't know what the numbers are? I call bullshit. Do you think the list that they turn over to the NSA/CIA/FBI has 'unknown caller' written all over it? Fuck no it doesnt. It probably gives the phone number, account holders name and address of every call, if not far more.

I really really hate it when companies play stupid. I lost a cell phone a while ago and went to the store. I wanted them to stop service on that line while I got another phone, and asked them if any calls had been made from the phone in the hours since I lost it. They said that they couldn't get those records. Fuck that. Say an FBI agent went into the store and needed the same information due to "Terrorisim". The information would be instant. I also asked if there was any way to guess what city the phone was in and if it was moving. They flatly responded no. (I had lost my phone in some cab I had taken that day, and if i knew what city it was in i could have called that cab company). I know that this is possible since they have been tracking down "crimials and terrorists" by using triangulation on their cell phones.

I was a paying customer standing there and being lied to. I had another problem on a land line. I was getting calls from a fax line about 10 times per night from an 'unknown' number. I called the phone company several times. They said that since it was unknown number they couldn't do anything about it. I asked if they could block that number from calling me. Nope, since it was unknown. Now what if I had called the police/fbi and said that they last number that called my fax had sent terrorist threats, or maybe that it was a person talking about their jihad. The number could have been found out within minutes.

So on your company, I also call bullshit. I am sure your records that they are turning over to big brother are accurate, and the ones they had you are probably not. Now let me go pack my things. I am sure that for thinking too much i'll be picked up any time now by the thought police.

Re:No, Technology isn't magic.

[CRC'99]

Third and Finally - Even though TV tells you that cell phone triangulation is a common practice, it's not. Triangulating on a cell phone call requires police, on foot, with three antennas, to find the right signal and take a measurement, from there they sit down with a map and work it out. This isn't built into the phone system, and its certainly not automatic. One reason for this is that one of the better ways to triangulate a signal is to measure the signal strength - if cell phone providers measured signal strength at all their towers consumer groups could gain access to those records durring the disclosure period of a civil suit to prove that large regions of their networks do not work sufficently.

Really? Wow. Thanks for telling me this. Nice to know it's complete rubbish. I work for a telco, and the guys across the dividers from us do live call tracing and mobile location all the time. It takes about 5-10 minutes and is usually accurate to within 200 metres. The neat part about GSM is that as your phone uses timeslots, the delay can be measured between your phone and the tower (like a ping). You then know how far away the phone is from the tower (because radio waves travel at a known speed). You phone is also always in contact with more than one cell station at a time. Add up all three factors (timeslow, delay, and different locations) and the system gives you a street name and approximate number.

Of course, this is all done after a an official document comes through with what circumstances. Usually it's for people threatening suicide. Every now and again it's a kidnapping or something major. It's harsh on these guys when their call trace comes back too late and the news the next day shows that 2 kids were kidnapped by their dad and murdered. True story - give these guys some credit.

Re:Seems Wrong.. Cell phones work in airplanes...

[JWSmythe]

    Do you believe everything the government feeds you?

    I know someone who tried this recently. They forgot to turn off their cell, and remembered mid-flight. They looked at the phone, and had no signal. Since it hadn't caused any problems so far, they left it on. The didn't have a signal again until they had almost landed (like the last minute or so of the flight).

  If terrorists were in control of an aircraft, would they be letting people call their family? hell no. If you're controlling a situation, you control everything about it. There's no half ass "ok, call mom and tell her you're ok".

Re:Yes, "partner." now fuck off, straight boy.

[d723]

Would you refer to your wife as "the woman whose pussy I pump?" "The bitch that sucks my cock?" If so you need to lay off the porn, dude. Not sure where you picked up all that gay stuff, but you've obviously given it some thought or been hitting the gay porn. Usually people leave verbose descriptions of the actual physical methods of their lovemaking out of whatever pronoun reference they use.

The thing is, you don't get to decide what word other people use to describe their relationships. They do. You opinion matter none. If you'd like them to respect your own chosen term and not vomit profanities all over you each time you mention your relationships, then you need to provide others the same courtesy. The only thing that can cause that kind of response is fear. What are you afraid of Mr. Anonymous? Afraid some guy will try and suck your cock or afraid you'll like it?

Oh and by the way Mr. I-feel-so-strongly-about-this-that-i-will-remain-a n-anonymous-coward, Homosexual sex is natural and normal. [seedmagazine.com], not to mention fun. Not everybody does it, but ... well you sound like you could use some.

Male big horn sheep live in what are often called "homosexual societies." They bond through genital licking and anal intercourse, which often ends in ejaculation. If a male sheep chooses to not have gay sex, it becomes a social outcast. Ironically, scientists call such straight-laced males "effeminate."

Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in "penis fencing," which leads, surprisingly enough, to ejaculation. They also give each other genital massages.