[HN Gopher] Getting a vanity phone number with four consecutive ...
___________________________________________________________________
Getting a vanity phone number with four consecutive digits
Author : jonluca
Score : 68 points
Date : 2022-05-30 14:25 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.jonlu.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.jonlu.ca)
| ghostly_s wrote:
| whilst the author seems to have partially corrected it, it seems
| this applies to many commenters here as well:
|
| consecutive != repeated
| koofdoof wrote:
| This post reminds me of the chapter in Steve Wozniak's biography
| dedicated to his obsession with phone numbers. It details his
| favorite owned numbers and attempts to convince phone companies
| to sell him numbers that make have interesting properties when
| converted to binary.
| phphphphp wrote:
| I just bought one off eBay, cost ~$100. Totally pointless but
| what's an overpaid software engineer to do with their money if
| not vanity.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| > what's an overpaid software engineer to do with their money
|
| https://beatmalaria.org/donate/
| xeromal wrote:
| Thank god there are some real people in here. haha
|
| How was the handoff process for the number?
| [deleted]
| andygcook wrote:
| I had a friend in high school who was randomly assigned a mobile
| number that contained exactly two digits - 3 & 9 (excluding the
| +1 for the US country code.) Over a decade later, it's one of the
| few phone numbers I can remember off the top of my head where the
| person isn't in my immediate family.
| gmac wrote:
| In the UK, when I was at school and at a time when numbers were
| shorter, I had a friend in the mid Sussex area (dialling code
| 0444) with a number that was mostly 4s.
|
| That made his number from anywhere in the world +44 444 4x4y4.
| I've always remembered his number too.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| In high school my friend got the number 500-0001 and I was always
| so jealous. But I think the number has become kind of irrelevant
| these days.
| caboteria wrote:
| When I was in high school, numbers with 0 in them were the
| worst because of how long they took to dial using a dial phone.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| When I signed up for GVoice it gave me the option to enter the
| last 4 digits and it would give me the number if it was
| available. I took advantage of this to make my phone number a
| palindrome (except for the area code).
| gurjeet wrote:
| I took advantage of this same Google Voice feature, and got
| myself a number with _7_ consecutive digits. So my phone number
| for an international caller is +1-234-567-xyzy.
|
| It was very easy for my kids to memorize as they were growing
| up.
|
| Sometimes, when I'm telling them my number for them to note
| down, people stop midway through until they realize I'm not
| really pranking them.
|
| I'm sure people would not take me seriously if my number had
| all 10 digits in a sequence and started to repeat after that.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I've got one that ends in xxx-6789. It makes it easy for kids
| to remember and it gets a nice little "huh!" from people when
| I tell them. Seven though, that's a whole 'nother ball game.
| endtime wrote:
| Back in the day, Google Voice let you find a number that
| matched a string, as in 1-800-LAWYERS. I got a number that,
| inclusive of area code (!), is of the form XYXY-<my first
| name>. It has a couple other interesting and obvious properties
| I can't share without making it too easy to guess the number,
| so I'll just say that it's a great number and I hope I never
| lose it.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| > I went through and bought a dummy number to figure out how to
| purchase the number programatically, and then did the same method
| as above to purchase it.
|
| This guy is going a little hard on the automation at the end
| there, what's the point of automating a one-in-a-lifetime task?
|
| Just buy the one number you want instead of the dummy number and
| you're done.
| soared wrote:
| Exploration and fun
| [deleted]
| happyopossum wrote:
| You have to be presented the number in the UI to buy it in the
| UI...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Before someone does this, consider one possible risk. People can
| easily remember vanity numbers. That is the risk.
|
| I did this when I worked in a wireless provider and it was a
| mistake in my case. It was _one of the_ factors that made me the
| go-to person for just about any problem and I was the default
| person to call for a myriad of issues. I was so happy to rid
| myself of that number. As a positive note this helped enforce a
| discipline in me to guide people to a ticketing system.
| PainfullyNormal wrote:
| I'd settle for a number that wasn't previously used. I've had
| my current number for 8 years and the caller id still shows the
| previous owner. I still get all manner of calls for the
| previous owner too, everything from local politicians asking
| for money to old friends asking if he's in town and wants to
| hang out.
| twhb wrote:
| I got a memorable phone number a while ago. Websites like
| numberbarn.com make it relatively easy. A key realization I had
| is that repeating numbers aren't the thing to look for, because
| they're what everybody is depleting and marking up, and actually
| aren't a very good proxy for what you really care about, which is
| memorability and maybe aesthetics. For example, 34567 is better
| than 37771, and also more likely to be available and cheap.
| Repeating digits and their associated markup are also about
| typability, but that probably barely matters to you if people are
| almost always calling from their address book.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| On a similar note, if you ever need to provide a (US) number for
| a discount and they don't verify it (like at grocery stores) you
| can almost always just use a 555 number [1] in the format:
| XXX-555-01XX
|
| These are designated as "fake" numbers and are used in TV and
| film when they need to show a number on screen but don't want to
| open up some random person to prank calls.
|
| Also, these numbers are almost always going to already be
| registered in a rewards program: XXX-555-5555
| 555-555-5555 XXX-867-5309
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number)
| asdkhadsj wrote:
| I had one a long time ago i liked, from Google iirc, something to
| the effect of 454-5451 (but different, ofc). To which i would
| rattle off "45 45 45 1" and confuse the hell out of every
| listener i was trying to convey the phone number.
|
| As much as i loved it, i stopped using it because of how confused
| it made literally everyone i gave it to in my unexpected format
| haha. The novelty wore off when i would inevitably have to repeat
| myself in the normal format.
| gtirloni wrote:
| _> The novelty wore off when i would inevitably have to repeat
| myself in the normal format._
|
| Same with a custom domain I had for emails. People just expect
| you to say "@gmail.com".
| MivLives wrote:
| I had both of these problems. My number used to be something
| like 555-348-8889. My email uses a domain hack of my last
| name so like Bob@smi.th. The former eventually changed to
| something equally ridiculous but easier to say, the latter
| I'm still trying to figure out how to say out loud after 8
| years.
| logifail wrote:
| > Same with a custom domain I had for emails. People just
| expect you to say "@gmail.com"
|
| Yup. For a looong time my email address has been the same:
| $firstname@$lastname.com
|
| When I'm giving it to someone new it usually takes a few
| tries for them to get it right, _even if they already know
| both my first and last names_ : /
| RC_ITR wrote:
| What's amazing about that, is if you did "454" "54" "51" people
| would probably react positively because they would feel like
| they "figured it out".
|
| Your problem was a) breaking convention b) not letting the
| other party get their own dopamine boost.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Yeah letting people figure it out or giving obvious but not
| complete hints so they figure it out would Bork great. It
| would make it more memorable for me.
| michaelterryio wrote:
| When I was a CSR at old AirTouch Cellular I would look for cool
| numbers and when 999-9999 in Phoenix came available I snapped it
| up for my employee phone benefit. You can't imagine how many
| wrong dials and prank calls you get. I gave it up after a month.
| carabiner wrote:
| My cat sitter's number legit ends in -0000. Couldn't believe it.
| She said it was just the number she was given.
| h4waii wrote:
| The author mentions it, but Burp Suite has both a "Repeater" and
| "Intruder" mode which can be used to do all of this without
| writing a single line of code.
| nayuki wrote:
| When I and my friends in Toronto signed up for mobile phone
| service about 15 years ago, we simply got to pick our last 4
| digits. I saw examples like picking the same suffix as their
| landline, picking a mnemonic for their name (e.g. MARY -> 6279),
| picking lots of trailing zeros.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I've had a non-vanity phone number with five consecutive (non-
| repeating) digits for over 25 years. Even before the advent of
| phone spam and robocalling, it was receiving a lot more calls
| than my other phones. Many of the calls were from kids playing
| with a phone. It seems to be more likely than not that people
| press consecutive digits when dialing a "random" phone number.
|
| Separately, I once bought a cell phone in a city with a brand new
| overlay area code, and they gave me this number: 424-210-0000.
| They were really surprised when I told them that I did not want
| it and had them port my old cell phone number to it instead. I
| suppose I could have kept it and then sold it to someone else.
| Apparently such things have value to some people, mostly
| businesses.
| gtirloni wrote:
| _> Apparently such things have value to some people, mostly
| businesses._
|
| It was more valuable when we didn't have smartphones or
| couldn't just look up any number online at any time. There was
| an advantage in having an easy to remember number that didn't
| require people to look in the yellow pages.
|
| Yes, I was there 3000 years ago.
| jffry wrote:
| I remember it being very common for taxi numbers to have
| 555-5555 in their local area code
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Fun fact: in the beginning of the 90's some Finnish telecom
| operators sold people short phone numbers, such as 050 1984.
| Today there exists a black market for these "lyhytnumerot" and if
| you want one, you'll have to pay thousands for it. But they exist
| and they still work.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| My vanity phone number has the year I was born and 6502, the CPU
| in my first computer.
| Joe8Bit wrote:
| I had a UK mobile number that had seven consecutive digits (e.g.
| 079* 444 4444). I got it through a friend who worked in
| provisioning at a new mobile operator that had just been assigned
| its new number blocks.
|
| The problem was people would constantly try to "steal" the
| number. Four or five times a year my phone would just stop
| working because someone had "persuaded" a call-centre worker at
| my provider to assign the number to a new SIM they could sell on
| eBay. Apparently people pay a LOT of money for vanity numbers.
|
| No matter what additional "security locks" they put on my account
| it kept getting hijacked, so eventually I just got a new (much
| less interesting) number.
| jhgb wrote:
| > Four or five times a year my phone would just stop working
| because someone had "persuaded" a call-centre worker at my
| provider to assign the number to a new SIM they could sell on
| eBay
|
| And they were unable to add a note to that account to the
| effect of "don't do X under any circumstances"?
| Joe8Bit wrote:
| They put all kinds of locks on the account but they never
| worked, my assumption was that people who worked at the
| provider (who could unlock anything) were the ones stealing
| it!
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| When i worked at att all of those things were just notes on
| the bottom of the account. You had to specifically scroll
| down and try to read it.
| jhgb wrote:
| And there was no audit trail for their actions? Wow.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Assuming that its similar to att, there is an audit
| trail, but noone will care to look at it for you. They
| will give your number back and consider it solved.
| coryrc wrote:
| Now you know why SMS 2fa isn't secure :)
| kuroguro wrote:
| Could have tried transferring the number to another
| operator if that's an option.
| appleiigs wrote:
| At work the telecom guy was proud of the telephone number he
| gave me ("very easy to remember!" he said). Well, it turns out
| it was one digit off of the local Alcoholics Anonymous help
| line. I had digit "1" and AA had "7". I got a lot of drunken
| phone calls and voice messages. All depressing since they were
| asking for help. Figured it out after a few calls, but from now
| on I'll take the ugly telephone numbers.
| interestica wrote:
| This is why the idea of 2FA using a mobile number is so absurd.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I had the same problem. Same type of 07 number as you - all
| consecutive. It was too much hassle. Also, with that number and
| my 07969696969 number that I thought was hilarious, I just had
| infinity prank calls all day, and worst of all, _all night_...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| In China, that would be the unluckiest phone number ever. My 30
| story Beijing apartment building lacked floors 4, 14, and 24
| due to superstition about 4 meaning death.
| wincy wrote:
| That sounds absurd. I can't believe a civilized society would
| exclude so many floors! In the US where we are completely
| reasonable and rational we only exclude the 13th floor. I
| used to work on the "14th floor" (actually floor 13) and I
| thought this was hilarious.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| In China what happens on the 4th floor stays on the 4th
| floor.
| psim1 wrote:
| Many VoIP providers have ordering systems that let you do vanity
| searches, and some have APIs. Twilio is one. You can put down a
| few dollars to start an account, buy a number, and then
| immediately port it away to a mobile carrier if you like.
| braingenious wrote:
| From the article: >One drawback is that it's not really
| integrated fully in your phone - for instance, iMessages to that
| number won't work, and the calls need to be made through the app.
|
| That _sucks_! I wonder if there's a way to fix that.
|
| As for memorable phone numbers, one of my buddy's parents had a
| phone number that was XXX-YYY-0001 and boy was that helpful when
| I got arrested and couldn't remember anybody else's number.
|
| Pro Tip: Memorize a few people's numbers!
| pacaro wrote:
| Also memorize a lawyers number if you're going to need it when
| arrested. If you call a buddy the police can and will listen to
| your call. If you call a lawyer then they can't.
|
| https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/stopped-by-police
| braingenious wrote:
| That's a good link! Here is another one that everyone should
| be familiar with:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > and a nice number to give out when you don't want to give out
| your real one.
|
| I've setup a voip.ms number just for voicemail. Unanswered calls
| to my phone get redirected to that number after X rings (this
| functionality is baked into gsm). Then the voicemails get emailed
| to me so I never deal with my provider's voicemail IVR.
|
| So for people I don't want to call me, I give them that voicemail
| number and it always goes straight to voicemail.
|
| It's also nice because I can still get and keep voicemails if
| I'm, say, out of country for 30 days because my provider deletes
| them after 10 or something days.
|
| Easy to share and save voicemails automagically.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > I never deal with my provider's voicemail IVR
|
| In the era of smartphones, why would anyone use an IVR for
| voicemail? On phone VM UI was a launch day feature for
| iPhone...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Only if your provider supports it. I'm in the 4th world when
| it comes to telecoms (Canada).
|
| I only set this all up in the first place because our
| providers charged for voicemail more recently than you'd like
| to know.
| sethbannon wrote:
| One of my YC batchmates had his company acquired by Google. They
| quickly shut down his product (shocking!) and had him product
| manage Google Fi instead. He gave me access to the beta about 7
| years ago. At that time, you could search for any string of
| numbers and it would let you see available numbers containing
| that string. I was able to get a number with 4 consecutive zeros
| in it and to this day it brings me joy every time I see or share
| it. Most people are not as amused but every now and then I'll
| meet someone who lights up when they see it. Without fail, they
| were also a math nerd growing up. I guess numbers tickle some
| people's brains differently.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| Google Voice had the same feature years ago. It's how I have an
| all prime number with triple 7s in the middle as my GVoice
| number.
|
| I also have my cell phone number that I used a new GVoice
| account to be able to search for. Got a 799-4999 like number by
| searching for three consecutive numbers and that popped up.
| Ported that out to my cell a few weeks later.
|
| I don't actually live or work in my home state, but I keep the
| same rural area code. Less spam overall and when I get a call
| from a home state area code that's not in my contacts, I can
| safely ignore it as being spam.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I'm not a big math nerd, but I'm also a programmer so maybe I
| have an slanted bias of what that means. Being ND also helps. I
| would love to see four consecutive numbers. I have kept two
| numbers around to now with 2 and 3 consecutive same digits. So
| XYY-ZYYY numbers without area code. With area code they are
| AYB-XYY-ZYYY for two diff area codes. I'd love giving up any Y
| overlap if the last four can be consecutive especially if it's
| 4.
| bpye wrote:
| I ended up picking my current number because it had a power
| of two. A silly thing but it amused me.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Some years ago, I met someone whose license plate was:
|
| 4745454B
|
| I immediately felt that something was up with that, took a
| few more seconds that I would have liked to figure out what
| it was.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| ND = ?
| HelenePhisher wrote:
| neurodiverse.
| loxias wrote:
| Psh. My phone number, which I got a few years ago, has the first
| 6 digits of pi. :D
|
| Took writing a script to brute force google voice, but totally
| worth it!
| oefrha wrote:
| Pro tip: don't hit a private API in a loop without any delay like
| the author.
| [deleted]
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| My wife got her phone number (randomly) many, many years ago that
| turned out to be the old number for "The Edge" radio station and
| got calls for years about people trying to request songs or
| answer trivia questions. Just some of the things that happen when
| you have one of those easy to remember numbers which are usually
| owned by taxi companies or pizza places.
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| I have a number ending in 6969. I got some very entertaining
| text messages and calls for a year or so.
| smallerfish wrote:
| I bought a DID on voip.ms with 5 consecutive digits. They allow
| you to search by any substring, though you can only search within
| a single area code, so it takes a little hunting and pecking to
| find a good one.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| asomeone can get a nice number then port it out right?
| garblegarble wrote:
| It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realise the author
| meant "repeating digits" when they said "consecutive digits" - I
| was scouring the examples for "1234" etc.
|
| This is a neat idea!
| OJFord wrote:
| That or 'consecutive digits _that are the same_ ', i.e. 'four
| consecutive 1s' would've made sense, it's just mis-generalised
| to 'digits'.
|
| If anything it's the 'sequential' implication of 'consecutive
| digits' (that I agree the phrase has) that's weird IMO.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I was also confused. I think the author is confusing the two
| words.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-05-30 23:01 UTC)