Sylvia's Blog

This blog was created in memory of my mother, Sylvia Siegel, who passed away peacefully in her sleep on 8/18/2007. It's intended to serve as a collection point for articles written about her, and for any type of anecdotes that anyone would care to share. So feel free to post entries and share. If you want to be added to the list of contributors, just send me an e-mail and I'll add you to the list. Also in my mom's memory, I will use this as a vehicle to post consumer-oriented information, especially related to telecommunications.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

876 Call Update

Thus far, I have heard back from my local PD "Ask your telephone company to block the calls." They can't, that's the point! TURN responded to say that their local advocate was resigning, so I really don't have a solution from them (yet). I haven't heard from the FCC.


I mapped all the 876 numbers to contacts in my contact list, and assigned those numbers a different ringtone (a rastafarian one, as befits Jamaica), so that I can just shut the calls off without having to look.

I also changed my voicemail message to let callers know that if they're calling from an 876 number, the authorities will be contacted (little do they know how little any authorities really care), otherwise, please leave a message! This seems to have helped, as I've only gotten one 876 call since I made that change. But a few days isn't enough time to know if this really worked, and it could just be that since they had little success with calling me, they just gave up.


I wrote into Pogue's blog on the Times today, since he wrote an interesting piece on SMS spam (which fortunately I haven't encountered yet!), so if anyone will have a good suggestion, he will. Or at maybe he'll do a post about the 876 problem and the phone companies will be shamed into giving us all call blocking as part of our regular expensive service.

Time will tell!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

My girlfriend got called today several times over and over. If they hear your name on the voicemail, they use that to try and get you to call back!!!!

Anonymous said...

Here are 2 more Jamaican numbers to be aware of: 876-596-3238 and 876-433-9183. These guys are working the scam that I have won 2.5 million dollars in a sweepstakes and need to send them money to collect the "award". After a good number of calls from me to them, not knowing that the numbers are from Jamaica, my phone bill was outrageously high. Right now Verizon is going to call the numbers on Monday morning to verify that they are actually used numbers. Only then will they have verification that the numbers were used in a scam to me. If no one answers, then Verizon will not give me credit for the calls and will consider them OK and I will have to pay the bill. WATCH OUT FOR THESE NUMBERS.

Anonymous said...

Great work.

Anonymous said...

my grandma has been getting the same calls for over a week 876-872-2900 they said she won 18.5 million dollars in a drawing. Asking to send 1500 hundred dollars so we could receive the money.Now we are receiving obsence for calls.

Brittany said...

i started to get phone calls two days From a guy named george milton and john vanhorne. He called me three or four times and by the end i cussed him out oops!!! Then he proceeded to tell me that he love me and that he would do anything to be with me!!! His number is 18768922726

Unknown said...


There has been eighteen different phone numbers that's calling my phone from this area - code 876 which belongs to Kingston Jamaica, the phone calls information is about I have won two. one million dollars and I would need to purchase a credit card from Wal Mart and call them back with the credit card number, after this was done, they will send me the money, how foolish, how foolish this can be. I'm so glad I have a free block service, I had enter only thirteen number this is all it would take, can you believe this outrages behavior these people are doing to get money. I would writ down the phone number it's so many, but I will give you four, 876-812-7767,876-483-8514,876-7909193,876-895-7367,876-573-8198 and more. Please somone please try to do something about this matter.

Anonymous said...

My parents are the latest victims. Calls & calls & calls. the sad part is my Mother is losing her short term memory and they are hoping to catch her at an ill moment, literally. She has played Publishers Clearing House all of her life and dreamed of winning the prize. So what do you think they are telling her? This has become very serious and I am insisting my Father change their lifelong phone number tomorrow. I really hope there is a place called HELL. The only problem is at this rate there will be no more vacancies. I think I 'll open a second location. Might as well cash in on this myself.

blogfest said...

Got this morning a few calls from 876-524-2465.Don't call this number back.

Unknown said...

I just put the phone up to the television speakers and let them listen to the View. I have to since the wife does. They hang up and I don't get another call for about a month. Then when I do I just repeat the process. It's funny to me.