From: Moroni <moroni@scranton.com>
To: The Deviant <deviant@pooh-corner.com>
Message Hash: 89e6ec1ebe11ffccb7eb6607270fa2d137842b0ae96576b77573d610db129837
Message ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.960714094635.9973A-100000@user1.scranton.com>
Reply To: <Pine.LNX.3.94.960714074238.7387C-100000@switch.sp.org>
UTC Datetime: 1996-07-14 17:25:25 UTC
Raw Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 01:25:25 +0800
From: Moroni <moroni@scranton.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 01:25:25 +0800
To: The Deviant <deviant@pooh-corner.com>
Subject: Re: Can't block caller ID in Massachusetts?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.94.960714074238.7387C-100000@switch.sp.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.960714094635.9973A-100000@user1.scranton.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
The reason that caller ID cannot be blocked to 800 and 900 numbers
is that it is used for billing purposes by the telephone company to the
person or business who owns that 900 or 800 number. EX: L.L.Bean (
alarge mailorder sporting goods store in Freeport,Maine) gets thousands
of calls from their clientele around the country.The 800s because they
are not charged to the person calling the L.L.Bean must be charged to
someone to pay the expenses of running the telephone equiptment and the
profits going to the stckholders so who pays ? The businesses pay. A way
must be found to figure out what they owe and the only way to do that is
to keep records. They records as they stand now include the phone number
from which they were dialed and the length of the call. My phone call to
them from Scranton ,Pa will cost the L.L.Bean less then Tim Mays from
California because I am closer. That is unless I perhaps have a package
missing and need to stay on the customer service line for twenty minutes
or longer when he just placed an order and got off in under five.
THe phone company looks at the L.L.Bean phone records and send them
a bill that includes how much it cost me to make that phone call to them
to find out if the package got lost and Tim's to order that wheelbarrow
and all the other callers. Each caller will have cost the L.L.Bean a
different amount of money. The telephone number on the reords. It can be
used to track down teenage hackers who want to upgrade their disk
drives(Bean has none) and other stuff too dependent upon the size of the
company (not Bean)and the integrity of the employees. It could
conceivably be used by an unscrupulous employee from Sadie's S and M to
blackmail someone or the whole clientele list. This is unforunate.
What could concevably be done is that the software could be
reprogrammed to delete the phone number immediatley after the
computation. Or to have the computation done immediately and deltion to
accompany it. third, the phone company could reprogram it so the mileage
and time is computed somhow without the logging of the caller. All of
this has to do computer programming and I find none of the aforementioned
an impossibility to achieve.
moroni
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