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Every few years, we get some variation of this claim in our inbox: This item is another example of a scam warning that has been continuously circulating via the Internet for more than fifteen years now, thereby receiving vastly more publicity than the potential threat it describes actually warrants. Although the warning originally had some kernel of truth to it, only a very small, specialized portion of the phone-using public is now vulnerable to the scam described therein. This scam does not affect residential or cell phone customers — it only applies to businesses, hospitals, government agencies, and other organizations that still use telephone private branch exchanges (PBXs) rather than Centrex lines to handle their calls. On certain PBX systems (i.e., ones for which pressing '9' is the signal to obtain an outside line, and there are no restrictions placed on outgoing calls), a scammer could gain access to place expensive, long-distance phone calls by tricking an employee into initiating the #-9-0 sequence. Outside of a few other settings where one might have to press '9' to obtain an outside line (such as hotels), the likely result of pressing #-9-0 will simply be a fast busy signal. Later versions of this warning evolved to include mention of the risk that terrorists utilizing the #90 sequence could frame innocent people (presumably by making terrorism-related calls linked to the phone numbers of those innocent parties) and remotely access cell phone SIM cards: Tips for heading off this form of telephone fraud include: You can learn more about this from AT&T.
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