My kiosk pursuits seem to have ruffled the feathers of CityBridge — that is, if I am reading tea leaves correctly. The broadcasts I do through the kiosks are done through a conference call bridge. Until recently I paid nothing for it but now I pay a small monthly fee.
After every conference I receive a summary e-mail about the conference call: how many people called, how many minutes, etc. I usually delete these e-mails because all the calls are from me and I don’t care about the number of minutes used.
So tonight, while I was not connected to the conference, I got three e-mails in a row showing 1- and 2-minute calls from a 917 (NYC) area code number. Through public web searches the number traced to someone at an Internet security company here in New York. Maybe there was a reason but I suspect this person dialed a NORTH DAKOTA phone number three times in a row because CityBridge is a client of his security firm and they asked him to look into why so many calls from the kiosks are going to that number.
I do not know that with certainty but I’m getting the idea on record in case I forget this happened.
So I played ball. I called this person at his phone number, which showed up on the conference call report. I called from a VOIP number that shows the spoofed CallerID sent out by the kiosks. He probably does not know that number off the top of his head, though sometimes CallerID shows “LinkNYC Caller” or something similar. But that’s only when the calls are actually made from the kiosks, not from here in the payphone bunker.
If he is a security dude for real then he either does not think this is much of a threat (it isn’t) or he’s kind of a gumshoe. It remains to be seen if he tries anything next. He’s probably getting $400 an hour for this.
I called him three times and, without intending to, somehow made it look like he had called himself. I don’t know what that means but that’s what I heard him say.
OK, called him one last time. He’s talking into thin air at me without knowing who I am. That’s how advertising works: you say something three times to make sure it registers. In this situation I add a fourth time, delayed, to make it seem weird. It’s all about advertising. I’m kinda pumped right now if I’m not making sense I’ll straighten it out later.
