Have you heard just about enough from your folks about how much tougher it was when they were your age? Ask them about Prince Albert.
They may have walked 10 miles a day to school (uphill both ways, no doubt), but when it comes to the telephone, your parents have nothing on you.
Your folks might tell you about the days of calling a tobacco shop, asking if they have Prince Albert in a can (it’s a pipe tobacco) and then yelling “Let him out!” before hanging up. Well, those days have been replaced. And not just because that call isn’t very funny, either. Here’s what’s up:
Say you employ one of Brian’s favorites. Brian (not his real name), a 13-year-old we talked to, calls and tells the kid on the other end of the line that he’s from the phone company. He says he will be calling back in a few seconds as part of a test, and asks the kid not to pick up the phone when it rings. Of course the kid picks up the ringing phone–they practically always do–and Brian starts screaming “like I’m getting electrocuted.”
Well, guess what? There’s a good chance that if you try this you could still be laughing and planning your next call when all of a sudden YOUR phone will ring. And it’s the kid you just called! Or maybe the person doesn’t call back right away. Instead, that kid, or worse, some mean old guy who got your call, has your number in hand–and he’s just waiting to call about the time your folks are asking you at dinner how you spent your day.
And get this. You don’t even have to say a word. You can hang up as soon as the call is answered and that call has been, as they say in the cop movies, traced. It gets worse. There doesn’t even have to be anyone home. If you call and an answering machine picks up, even if you say nothing, that call can come right back to your house.
Stuff like Caller ID and Automatic Call Back have made it easier than ever for somebody to find out who is calling. That has made it tougher for a favorite scam that’s as old as your parents: the Pizza Delivery Scam. In your mom and dad’s day, a kid could call a pizza place and order a pizza (extra pepperoni, of course) and then wait for the delivery guy to show up at your neighbor’s house. The pizza place would ask for a number, but you could give them any number at all, and they’d be so busy they wouldn’t call back. But 16-year-old Amy (not her real name, either) said that pizza places are getting wise to wise guys. “They have Caller ID at restaurants, and if you give a different number than the one they see, they won’t send the food. So everyone is smartening up.”
Plus, the cops love this stuff. It is not like the old movies where people have to keep callers on the phone long enough for the cops to trace a call. Making a call now, said Chicago Police Officer Pat Camden, “is like leaving a huge fingerprint with your name underneath it saying, `Come and get me.’ “
Remember, too, that the person on the other line might view your fun as harassment. And harassment is against the law. If someone calls the phone company and complains, the company might hand that info over to the police. The next thing to happen could be a police officer knocking at your door.
“We will make a visit and inform the parents that this is where a call came from,” said Palatine police sergeant Randy Walker. “Or we could contact the parents and have them and their kid come down to the police station.”
Police say you probably won’t actually be arrested. But we’re guessing that if your parents have to get hauled to the police station, you’re gonna pay!
Speaking of paying if you insist on making a crank call, hang on to your money. Because if you do something dopey like order a pizza for somebody else, and you get caught, the pizza place might just make you hand over your dough.
