NotesFromTheRocket Escape Pod

OK, I am typically not a paranoid person…(well, except the Eisenhower administration really is after me…I swear!)… but when something has been going on for a year, it’s probably time to call attention to it.

I’ve been stalked before (part of my hesitation in the early days of social networking to reveal myself on various social nets), and I’ve been crank called before, but normally by overzealous sales people. (I’ll tell you my series of “I’m gonna sell you this printer!” calls someday.) These past year of calls, however, has taken on a weird, ominous twist…

…for about a year, I have been getting unwanted calls from Somalia, from dozens of different phone numbers with the country/city code 252. Weirder still? It is almost always from the same person or persons, regardless of the number of origin. I’m not alone in this - dozens of people from various countries (Sweden, the UK, the US, etc) are getting the same “courtesy” calls - and have been since 2008. (Check out other people’s complaints here and here.)

I have an android phone and have been mostly dealing with it by loading Extreme Call Blocker, since T-Mobile is about as helpful in this situation as my dogs would be if I asked them to help. (BTW, I’ve recently been using the new ECB feature of auto-answering with a high pitched squeal just for shits and giggles…yeah, I know its sophomoric revenge, but what the hell?)

While Extreme Call Blocker works for a while, whoever is calling just keeps changing their number or switching to a blocked number in order to through the ECB block. In other words, these are not accidental calls or misdialing - who ever this is seems aware that I am attempting to block their calls and have been actively and aggressively attempting to circumvent the block. 

I’ve also experimented with not blocking the numbers, but letting them through to voicemail. The results have had a consistant pattern. All of the calls:

• are in Somali or Arabic
• mostly male (some exceptions)
• either long monologues, or frantic and/or pissed off (see my “auto-answering with squeal” above - probably had something to do with that.)
• the same person or persons every time. For a year. From different numbers.
• Occasionally I hear children in the background
• occasionally there is a woman’s voice, but the man always takes over

On a few occasions I have tried to call the numbers back, 90% of the time it has resulted in continual ringing with no answer. On the 10% where someone answered (or if I answered an incoming call myself) the man on the other end of the line got increasingly agitated that I didn’t speak his language, and started to scream at me louder in Samali or Arabic. (Kinda like American tourists in, say, France :) )

While these were amusing calls in the beginning, the fact that they are increasing in frequency, the numbers are changing, AND its the same person has started to get me more and more concerned…

I’ve deleted a lot of my call logs since this has begun, but in the last week alone, the calls have come from the following numbers:

• unknown / call blocked (although, weirdly, these are rare)
• 25290277148
• 25290545114
• 25290901574

Attempts to trace these numbers have, not surprisingly, resulted in dead ends. My next stop is to have the calls translated - but I just haven’t been able to find a source to help me out there yet. 

OK, to the meat of it… Want to hear a few of these bad boys? I haven’t saved them all, and I don’t let most of them anywhere near my voicemail box, but I have saved a few dozen. Here’s a random sampling over the course of the last few months. (Also, if anyone out there can translate these, feel free to do so in the comments section - thanks.)

• Sept 7 2011: 2 Male Voices. One seems to be consulting with the other.
• Sept 7 2011: Male Voice Dialog, came in as an unknown/blocked number.
• October 17 2011: 2 second call. Woman’s voice, and then she is interrupted.
• October 17 2011: 3 seconds of background noise/voices.
• October 17 2011: 42 seconds of silence. Came in after the two calls above.
• Dec 05 2011: Long Dialog - Male Voice (this is the usual caller)
• Dec 05 2011: Second long dialog for that day - Male Voice
• Dec 27 2011: Long male dialog - Male Voice
• Dec 27 2011: Silence, then choppy male voice - bad VoIP call
• Dec 27 2011: Woman begins a dialog, then a man takes over

How about you? Anyone else out there getting these calls? Have you done anything about them? Is this worth a call to the state department or other authority, or is it just some misguided attempt to try and sell me Somalian magazine subscriptions?