Date: Sat, 11 Apr 92 17:16:52 CST
From: Jack Decker <Jack@myamiga.mixcom.com>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Why Are War Dialers Illegal?
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 309, Message 6 of 8

In message <telecom12.304.8@eecs.nwu.edu>, helfman@aero.org (Robert S.
Helfman) writes:

> Mr. Moderator, you must be a very trusting soul to leave your phone
> ringer operative when you go to sleep. I cannot count the number of
> times that I was awakened and mind-jangled by late night wrong
>  numbers, before I finally got smart and started putting my electronic
> ringer on a BSR X-10 module and sending it into a black hole as my
> last act before retiring for the night.  I have it scheduled to go
> back on every morning at 6:00 am.

> Needless to say, I sleep better now. (The answering machine gets it
> all.  If it's the county coroner calling with bad news, it can wait
> until morning.  If someone's dead, putting it off 'till morning won't
> make 'em any deader!)

I have to agree with this.  I have a computer and modem hooked up to
my home phone line that goes up at midnight (if I'm not still up using
the computer!)  and down again at around 6:55 AM.  Well, last year my
wife's dad passed away in the middle of the night (this was not
unexpected, we knew that his death was rather imminent and she had
driven 300 miles to be with him only a week before) and her stepmother
just couldn't wait until morning to deliver the bad news.  She tried
several times but of course, she couldn't get through because the
modem kept answering the phone.

So rather than wait until morning, she called the State Police and
asked them to deliver the message.  They arrived just before 6 A.M.
and I answered the door.  Since they didn't actually leave a message
(they just said to call the stepmother at her home number), I called
and got the bad news, then woke my wife up so she could talk.  I
figure that because her stepmother couldn't get through at 3:30 A.M.,
my wife got another two and a half hours of precious sleep.

News of a death is hard enough on anyone and I really have to wonder
about the idiots who simply must call to deliver such news in the
middle of the night.  You know that in most cases the recipient is
going to take it hard anyway, so why cause them to lose sleep by
calling in the middle of the night (you KNOW they will never be able
to go back to sleep after receiving news like that!).  And my wife and
the stepmother weren't that close (her father had remarried relatively
recently and my wife hardly knew her stepmother) so I don't think she
was calling to cry on her shoulder; she just more or less gave her the
information and said goodbye.

By the way, I do wish there were such a thing as a modem that would
send the modem answer tone normally, but at the same time would listen
for touch tone digits until such a time as the other modem handshakes,
and if the caller is a human and taps in a preset code it would shut
off the modem answer tone and send a simulated ring tone out the
modem's speaker (or ring a phone that "hangs off" of the modem).  That
way, a line that was usually used for data (at least during a certain
time of day) COULD also be used for voice in the odd unusual
circumstance where this would be desirable.  My kids aren't old enough
to be out after midnight yet, but I can forsee a day when I might want
to have them (or certain other people) be able to "get past" my modem
IF THEY KNOW THE CODE.  But I don't want the delay of going through an
external switching device for the incoming modem calls, which make up
the vast majority of my after-midnight calls! 

I really can't understand why nobody has made a reasonably-priced
modem that can also recognize touch tone digits on an incoming call
(in addition to an originate modem tone).  It shouldn't cost all that
much to add something like that, and I can think of several
applications where such capability might come in handy!


Jack Decker   jack@myamiga.mixcom.com    FidoNet 1:154/8