Lesson plan
809 scam
An 809 scam is a form of phone fraud which exploits the tendency of telephone subscribers in Canada and the United States to presume that a number in the familiar North American Numbering Plan format of 1-NPA-NXX-XXXX is a domestic call at standard rates because of the absence of the 011- international prefix which normally indicates an overseas call. Points in the former +1-809 area code are not in mainland North America but in the Caribbean, distributed among multiple small island nations. Some former 1-809 points are US possessions (such as Puerto Rico and USVI), but many are sovereign entities. Adding to the confusion, the 809 code was split into multiple new area codes in 1997. A call to these points may be just as expensive as any other overseas call. Most numbers in these area codes are legitimate; calls to regular landlines in many of the countries may normally be moderately priced. There is, however, a risk that premium numbers in these area codes will not be properly identified as such; the use of a foreign country allows circumvention of the meagre consumer protections which the US Federal Communications Commission or the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) apply to domestic 1-900 or 976-XXXX schemes. Often, the claims of high costs are exaggerated to the point of urban legend after repeated re-telling in e-mail.…
Article summary
An 809 scam is a form of phone fraud which exploits the tendency of telephone subscribers in Canada and the United States to presume that a number in the familiar North American Numbering Plan format of 1-NPA-NXX-XXXX is a domestic call at standard rates because of the absence of the 011- international prefix which normally indicates an overseas call. Points in the former +1-809 area code are not in mainland North America but in the Caribbean, distributed among multiple small island nations. Some former 1-809 points are US possessions (such as Puerto Rico and USVI), but many are sovereign entities. Adding to the confusion, the 809 code was split into multiple new area codes in 1997. A call to these points may be just as expensive as any other overseas call. Most numbers in these area codes are legitimate; calls to regular landlines in many of the countries may normally be moderately priced. There is, however, a risk that premium numbers in these area codes will not be properly identified as such; the use of a foreign country allows circumvention of the meagre consumer protections which the US Federal Communications Commission or the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) apply to domestic 1-900 or 976-XXXX schemes. Often, the claims of high costs are exaggerated to the point of urban legend after repeated re-telling in e-mail.…
Key claims
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.