I just read a looooooong article about that yesterday. About a blind teenager who had mastered the art of anonymous calling and learned how to use telephone to do the CREEPIEST, most awful hateful intimidating anti-social things. I'll try and find a link for the story.

I'm not sure if this is what you're talking about but it sounds like it.

Read:  The Boy Who Heard Too Much

Totally surreal stuff this kid could do with a telephone.

There's a whole class of phone junkies called "Phreaks" who have figured out how to call 9-1-1 and make it look like their call is coming from a "target" house (a house of someone they hate). They will place the call and tell the dispatcher that they are holding the family hostage and that the police better come because the caller is threatening to kill the occupants of the house **it looks like** he is callIng FROM.  

So the SWAT team shows up with their guns drawn to find a family sitting around watching television.  The Phreaks call this "swatting" someone and they do it to intimidate people.

This is all TOO real. It's very, very disturbing.

It's something phone "phreaks" can do. There are security issues in the caller ID system. Someone with the right knowledge can pretend to be any number they want to on caller ID. It's not even something reserved for the knowledgable. There are websites out there which can do this for people. This just spoofs the caller ID info normal, everyday subscribers get on their phone. So always take the caller ID information on your phone with a grain of salt. It can be easily changed.

Now what's harder to do is spoof the number and location information to 911 operators. That's a different system than caller ID. However, even that can be done by those with the right knowledge. This can lead to dangerous "swatting" situations like those described in the article Ray gave. Besides the incidents described in that article, there was also a web-based "reality" show that was subjected to several swatting incidents. And those are just the incidents that make the news. Now luckily it's a far smaller group of people who have the skills to fool 911, so most people don't have to worry about it unless they end up on the radar of one of these phreaks.

Thanks Ray for the link very interesting, I will have to pass it on to my friend. Good to see u back.

Shwaine: good points, my daughter ex's does this all the time he will call her using my cell # to make her think I am calling when I am sitting next to her.  I have also seen him use the sheriff number to see if she will pick up.