Cloned ... and Go Figure! (non-technical)

[Greg Newell]

On Sat, 17 Jan 1998 16:49:38 -0500, Zen Reinhardt wrote:

>Hello List!
>
>I guess anything can happen at least once to anyone.  Last night I came to
>the realization that my cell phone may have been cloned when the phone rang
>at some odd hour.  The only reason why it was on at all was that I was
>checking the power remaining in the battery.  I answered, and the caller
>promptly hung up.
>
>Called the cell- provider 24-hour customer service number.  They pulled up
>my records and YIKES!!  The past month bore no resemblence to my calling
>patterns over the past 3 years.  The resettable timer on my phone said I
>had used just 43 minutes and the service rep said I was being billed for
>over 1000 minutes for calls made to all parts of the country for the
>billing cycle ending just 3 days ago.  Go Figure!  My monthly average is
>less than 100 min.
>
>My question to the world is this.  Do the cell- service providers monitor
>account activity the way credit card companies do?  Somehow I doubt it. 
>Otherwise such an increase in activity at the outset of this mess should
>have been detected.  Add to the evidence some calls originating from the
>metro Detroit area within the same hour as a roaming call originating from
>Massachusetts.  Go Figure!  It didn't seem to occur to anyone at the cell-
>provider that anything was amiss until I reported last night's call
>attempt, that being the first hint I had that something was going on.  The
>bill should be arriving here in about a week.
>
>No doubt there will be a fall-out from all of this.  I'll be tempted to
>keep you all posted with all of the gory details but if you'd rather I
>didn't, please say so.  Thanks for taking the time to read this much ... so
>far.
>
>ZR!  RPT
>Ann Arbor  MI
>diskladame@provide.net
>
i just got one and , rest assured, they will take care of you.  They will ask you to mark all 
the calls on you bill that are not yours. I did some research into this so that I did not 
make a mistake with my recent choice.  They tell me that your phone sends out a 
signal to locate the closest tower every 20 seconds or so. At this time the bad guys out 
there are monitoring air waves (read rush hour traffic) and grabbing your signal to clone 
and run up your bill.  The bad guys usually sit on overpasses and grab as many as 
20-30 signals each rush hour and steal time for 1 month untill their caught.  You must 
replace either the equipment or the phone number to break their hold for about 1 month 
untill they latch on to a new "mark" . Do you feel soooooo used?
				Greg
Greg and Mary Ellen Newell
Greg's Piano Forte`
Lakewood, Ohio 44107
gnewell@en.com