AC 809 Scam and Inappropriate Messages to the List

[Thomas J Hawley tjh@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Richard Giering  on
Sun, 04 Feb 2001 17:34:22 -0500

[Off-Topic Sunday]

The basic premise of the "warning" is correct; someone from my office got
caught by this one a few years ago.

HOWEVER: Area 809 used to be the entire Caribbean, but that's no longer the
case; the Bahamas for example (which is not quite the same as the British Virgin
Islands) is now Area 242. The BVI is 284. You need to be careful about placing
a call to any number that "looks like" a US domestic number; this includes
several Caribbean countries that are within the North American Numbering Plan
Area and have US-style numbers.

Verizon's web site does indeed carry a warning about this fraud, although it's
still limited to 809 (anyone served by Verizon will not be surprised to hear
that). AT&T's web site makes the better point to be careful about calling any
overseas number that looks like a US number.

There are other venues for this kind of information; it does not belong on the
Xy list even if up to date and accurate (which this particular posting was not.)

And finally: If you feel that you really must share some message that you've
received with this list, at least take the time to edit out the accumulated
message headers and html before doing so.

Tom Hawley
tjh@xxxxxxxx