I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled Into International Phone Fraud

2016-12-04 cuba, economy, fraud, telephony, phreak, martians, Mars, VOIP

A few weeks ago, I was trying to call Cuba. I got an error message—which, okay, international telephone codes are long and my fingers are clumsy—but the phone oddly started dialing again before I could hang up. A voice answered. It had a British accent and it was reading: “…the moon was shining brightly. The Martians had taken away the excavating-machine…” Apparently, I had somehow called into an audiobook of The War of the Worlds. Suspicious of my clumsy fingers, I double-checked the number. It was correct (weird), but I tried the number again, figuring that at worst, I’d learn what happened after the Martians took away the excavating machine. This time, I got the initial error message and the call disconnected. No Martians.

via http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/12/cuban-telephone-fraud/509006/?single_page=true