*77

So I recently received the following chain letter from one of my cousins:

YOU MUST KNOW *77

I knew about the red light on cars, but not the *77. It was about 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon, and Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. Lauren's parents have always told her never to pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather to wait until they get to a gas station, etc.

Lauren had actually listened to her parents advice, and promptly called *77 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull over right away. She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her. The dispatcher checked to see if there were police cars where she was and there weren't, and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back up already on the way.

Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her. One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pulled the guy from the car and tackled him to the ground. The man was a convicted rapist and wanted for other crimes. I never knew about the *77 Cell Phone Feature, but especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car.
Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going to a safe & quiet place.
You obviously need to make some signals that you acknowledge them (i.e. put on your hazard lights) or call *77 like Lauren did.

Too bad the cell phone companies don't generally give you this little bit of wonderful information.

*Speaking to a service representative at **Bell ** Mobility confirmed that *77 was a direct link to state trooper info. So, now i! t's your turn to let your friend s know about *77.

Send this to every woman (and person) you know; it may save a life. This applies to ALL 50 states.

The letter seems genuine. Trying to give out valuable information to people to use in case of emergency. It has all the elements, personal experience, technical backup and genuine concern for women everywhere.

But something struck me wrong about the letter, so I looked up the *77. This is the email I sent back to everyone in the chain that I could find.

That is definitely 3 buttons on a phone that people need to know about. Another 3 buttons that people need to remember are:

911

According to The North American Numbering Plan (NANP), the regulatory committee for regulating area codes, exchange codes and vertical service codes (anything that starts with an *) *77 is designed to allow customers to activate the anonymous call rejection feature of their phone. (*87 to reactivate it). You can read about other vertical service codes here. This feature is disabled on most cell phone carriers since this feature is handled at the routing substation and would involve sending thousands of updates to all cell phone routing towers for this to be accomplished. If you don't believe me, go ahead and try it. As far as the "Bell Mobilty" representative. Bell Mobility is a Canadian wireless provider, similar to AT&T Wireless/Mobile. Canada's numbering plan is also regulated by the NANP, so I doubt this works in the great white north either, but since I don't have a Canadian cell phone, I can't neither prove or disprove this, but I do know, that it doesn't work in America.

I worked for some time in the telecommunications field. I've also worked for quite a while in the internet, long enough to learn that you shouldn't trust everything you read on the internet, especially in chain letters.

But in all seriousness, the 911 feature works on ANY cell phone. Whether or not that cell phone currently has an active phone plan or not. 911 will still work, even on a deactivated cell phone. Don't get me wrong, if your cell phone doesn't have a signal/service (bars) you can't call anyone, but if it does, you can still call 911. So if you have an old cell phone that you don't really use any more, but that does work, I would recommend throwing it in the glove box of your car, or giving it to a teenage driver or anyone who doesn't have a cell phone to ensure that they can call the police in any emergency.

So turns out that this nice, genuine letter is completely fake. Go ahead, pick up your cell phone and dial *77, no police, or interstate trooper hotline.

My other problem with this letter is this. Chain letters are most often fake. There are designed to get passed across the internet by some PR agency to promote their product, created as phishing schemes to get people's personal information in order to steal their identity or designed by some well intentioned citizen but will most likely will go horribly wrong. What people don't really realize is that those chain letters are a great source of working, current email addresses that SPAMMERS can use to add to their contact list. Go ahead and look back at the last chain letter you received. I'm sure you'll see the names of the 20 people that got it when you did, and the 20 people that got it when the person that sent it to you go it. and the FW line from the person who sent it to them and on and on. On the chain letter sent to me, there were at least three dozen valid email addresses. And people wonder how they get on some of these mailing lists.

The other thing I wanted to say is to remind people that the internet is not a credible source. Just because you read something in an email, or you saw it on the internet, doesn't mean its fact. People walk by the tabloids every time they checkout at the grocery store and read about Britney Spears giving birth to alien twins while in the bathroom of some nightclub, or the dog that was born with a goat head or whatever, and they immediately know that its false, but for some reason, people believe the internet to be fact.

Don't believe everything you read!!!
/end rant.