I've had several odd experiences of CLI recently. Certainly some are VoIP account numbers, as I got my own back to me (8 figures plus a leading zero); that account also allows a choice of its phone numbers to be shown and I have read elsewhere that they are considering allowing other numbers which you can prove are yours.

Trying out a couple of other things recently, I discovered something we've been told before - that the ID is actually available to networks but not to the destination - seems to be true, as I could call a couple of numbers and have my caller ID read out to me. But it wasn't my ID, just one of the providers routing the call; eg I called a UK freephone number via a US SIP address and found I had a UK 0200 number.

Other people here will know a lot more about the technicalities of it, but it strikes me that some call routing involves four or five links, and if the original ID is not carried through, or another one masks it, then it is usually shown as withheld rather than some random or actual other number being applied.

On one international SIM I have, the caller ID is sometimes the actual caller, sometimes withheld, but I've also had Russian, Bahrain, Singapore and French numbers indicated; on another forum, someone suggested the 00973 one was a US one without the 1 shown, which also happens, but when I called it there were bilingual English and Arabic announcements.

Another int'l SIM has all caller ID withheld for all incoming and outgoing calls, but I've received one callback from an Irish number (first 0 missing though), and I have found out the ID actually sent by the network.

That will be the tricky stage - surely it is or should be illegal to spoof real IDs, as they can be used to fraudulently obtain phone calls made via other providers, eg I spoof your ID to pay for my 18185 calls - but it probably won't work as they may see another number as well.

I've read NGM complaining on another thread about foreign IDs withheld by BT; whilst he probably has a point when it's all calls, at least some of these will be unavailable due to the cheap routing methods used including VoIP - I wonder if one caller ID I got is actually an IP address without the dots(0217...), and I've had voicemail emails via 1899 from an IP address.

So, to answer the question after all this prattling on, and as others said, the ID may be some default account number applied by a VoIP provider that hasn't set up caller ID properly, but it probably doesn't imply something sinister.

Johnny Debt wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2006 at 11:17am:


It will dial 009999999 but of course there is no such number so you will get number unobtainable or equivalent if you call it.