Many not amused by Cellcom's 'prank call' service

That call you got late at night with an odd voice on the other end may have been an Israeli phone company’s idea of humor

If you’ve ever been awakened at 3 a.m. by a weird-sounding caller, check the number where the call came from on your caller ID. If it originated from 052-9991560, that was no wrong number; you’ve just been introduced to a “fun” option provided by Israeli cellphone company Cellcom, which lets users of its “Fool Call” service make “humorous” phone calls to any Israeli phone number.

The service lets its users mask the number they are calling from, and also lets them change their voice using the phone’s keypad, so that both the phone number and the voice doing the talking are unidentifiable.

According to Cellcom, the service (called “Avoda Ba’Oznayim” in Hebrew, or “Fooling the Ears”) is very popular among people who enjoy playing pranks on friends and relatives. But there’s nothing to stop anyone from using it to call people they don’t know, or from calling people they know for purposes other than fun.

The service is one of many that the various phone companies offer, which users can access using the asterisk (*) button. For example, by dialing *90 and then a phone number, Pelephone and Orange customers can record conversations and store them in an online audio library for NIS 5 (about $1.25) per month. Other asterisk services from the cellphone service providers (as well as land-line service provider Bezeq) allow users to reach banks, hotels, service providers, and other organizations.

Cellcom’s prank-call service is unique among the Israeli phone companies, however. Customers can call the number that later appears on Caller ID displays (052-9991560), which tells them how to access the service: Dial *25 and the phone number you wish to reach, and when the person on the other end of the line answers, play around with the keys on the dial pad to make your voice sound higher, lower, male, female, etc. There is no charge for the service, the helpful voice giving the instructions informs users, “just the cost of the cellphone call itself.” And, with as much of a wink as is possible in an audio phone call, the voice tells users, “good luck!”

Not everyone appears to be amused, judging by the comments in numerous online forums, where people receiving frequent unwanted calls have gathered to discuss strategies to combat them.

Among the suggestions made in these forums are asking the phone service provider to block calls from 052-9991560, and/or reporting the harassing calls to police. One sure-fire strategy for land-line users, several people posting in these forums insist, is to answer the phone and leave it off the hook, which keeps caller’s line open, even after he hangs up. “I did it twice, and that took care of it,” wrote one poster in a forum. “It was a lot easier than arguing with Cellcom.”

Cellcom had no official comment about the service. A company source, however, said that “this is a very popular service for Cellcom, and customers tell us how much fun it is. People need a laugh, and this provides them with an opportunity for humor.”

“Of course, this is completely off the record,” the source said.