Nov 25, 2014 22:28
A few months ago, I bought a phone number off the internet because that's the sort of thing you can do these days.
A day or so later, I bought a different number off some other people. That one came with all sorts of Ruby-hackable bells and whistles attached, so I hacked up the thing I wanted (a web app that allowed you to forward $number to a selection of mobiles that were made available via a drop-down list. The code's trivial and probably still on Bitbucket where I left it.) and forgot about the first number because it turns out that internet-based telephone numbers are like 9 bob a year.
Then I started getting wrong numbers. People who were quite surprised that they'd managed to call a mobile, and in one case really jolly aggrieved about it.
Of course I'd redirected the first number to my mobile, and on inspection I discover that it's quite close to the online banking number for $BANK.
It turns out that the bells and whistles attached to the second number make building an annoying phone robot (or IVR as they call them in the trade) rather simpler than falling off a wet log while blind pissed.
Were I a Bad Sort, I'd have rung up $BANK and attempted to make a facsimile of their IVR with a view to phishing the sausage fingered.
Since I'm not a Bad Sort, I did something else.
0844 3760094
back of the sofa or back of the net,
glasgow advice,
hacking of a different sort