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Is there a way, online or otherwise, to check if a phone number is a premium rate number which will charge my bill? It seems there should be some way to do this with certainty.

Can phone numbers be cloaked if I am messaging the phone number. For example, if I send a text or make a call to a number (rather than receive it and respond) is it possible that the number was cloaked?

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Welcome to IT Security! We try our best to focus on the areas of Information Security around risk management and asset protection. As it stands this question doesn't really seem to be on-topic, please have a look at the FAQ to get a better idea of what we're about and how to make your question more clearly on-topic. – Scott Pack Jan 28 at 16:08
What locale? Telephony charging schemes vary wildly depending on region, and you cannot in general rely on limiting specific blocks of prefixes. – bobince Jan 28 at 17:13

closed as off topic by Terry Chia, makerofthings7, Scott Pack, AJ Henderson, this.josh Jan 28 at 18:25

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1 Answer

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Your telephony provider will be able to provide you with a rate sheet that outlines the different charges for different numbers. This is as far as I know the only definative way of working out the charge, pretty much everything else is just assumption & guideline - as a for instance, 0800 numbers are free on my mobile contract, but on most of the big name mobile companies they are premium numbers and even outside your bundle.

As far as cloaking of numbers - if I understand your concern, you get charged for the number you dial - if the recipent then diverts it to a premium number - for whatever reason - they pay the premium fee. My company does this, we provide a free fax number, but we divert it to a premium rate 'fax to e-mail' service. We pay the premium as our fee for using the service, our clients pay nothing since they called a free phone number.

Hope that helps

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