tracking a phone called from "private number".

does anyone know if it's possible to find out the phone number that called when it is identified as private number?

my ex received a call on her mobile that said it was a private number.
the call was effectively a prank call, but it was of a very disturbing nature.

does anyone know if telstra can give info on the call?
i know, i know, why don't i call telstra and find out?
i will be calling them tomorrow, but i wanted to see if anyone had any experiences like this before or if they knew the best department to speak to.

 

Phone companies all sign an agreement on harassing phone calls, can't remember what it was... But for vodafone you need 3 examples times etc before they even bother taking a report for investigation for it. All that happens then is they send a letter to the person who made the calls saying cease and desist, they won't tell you who it is.

 

I think because its a privacy matter, telstra won't give you the details. If it was say a death threat and you lodged a police complaint then they could request the details from telstra.

 

Record the time and date.
If it's disturbing enough, file a police report.
Lodge the complaint to your service provider.

 

x2

There is no way in hell that Telstra will give away any information.
They will be able to tell you what you will be able to do though. Use that.

 

you need to speak to unwelcome calls. http://www.telstra.com.au/unwelcome-calls/

the easiest way into the system is to call the department who looks after the type of phone service she has (in this case Mobilenet, 125111) and ask to report an unwelcome call scenario. be persistent, they seem to have a bunch of n00bs there at the moment, so if the person you score doesn't know what you are talking about then ask to speak to a supervisor.

there is no way you'll get any details identifying the origin of the call, due to privacy provisions. personally I'm also not sure they will do much over a single call, albeit disturbing and upsetting for the receiver. normally there needs to be a pattern established.

definitely ring and report the issue though, if only to establish the start of a paper trail should it become a further issue. if you were to report the issue to the police, the first thing they will suggest is doing what I have suggested anyway, so start there and get the process going.

 

This is correct. Try 1800 805 996 for Telstra's Unwelcome Calls centre.
They'll start a file, with mobiles they can go back in time (whereas with landlines they can't), so you'll need to get the exact date and time of the call off her phone. You have to be within 3 minutes either side of when the network shows the call, otherwise it can't be accepted legally.

UWC can't pass on any information to you, however your local police can contact the Law Enforcement Liaison Unit (they should have the number, it's not in my little black book for some reason) or they can call the UWC centre themselves who will advise how to proceed.

Just before I left in 2007 (part of my multi-skilling was UWC), there had to be three calls from the same number within a month for any action to be taken, which consisted of a warning letter (if they were a Telstra customer) or passing on of the complaint to their carrier (some were better than others at passing the warning on).
However, depending upon the content of the call, the police may be happy to chase it up after a single call (can remember plenty where this happened). UWC will still start a file from one call though, so get onto that ASAP, as there's also a limit to how far back the mobile records go.

-Nick

 

same thing happened to my ex gf, but she played along and told the guy he has a sexy voice etc. until she got a date with him, her brother gave the prankster the beating of his life!

 

Had an experience with this sort of thing myself recently.

GF was getting harassing phone calls quite often and at random times of the night. Most was around 20 calls in 3 hours. She answered them cause she thought it was her ex, no-one said anything when she answered, just silence. She found out it wasnt her ex and started to get very scared.
She called service provider (Westnet) and they said when she gets the phone calls, press # button on the phone to 'tag' the call. As said previously though, all they could do was send a cease and desist letter to the caller. GF was not happy with this and got the cops involved. Calls were tagged, cops obtained number from Westnet, and told GF the last six digits of the number. (Would not give all numbers due to privacy, etc).

Turns out the caller was my ex.

Cops werent happy that i rang and abused the living shit out of her, she threatened to sue cops for giving out private info.

 

hero!

/chars

 

I had a similar thing, harmless but annoying calls. Rang Telstra, and they said record the times etc, had to be separate calls, on three separate occasions for them to even act. Calls dried up before I bothered going back to Telstra.

 

Can you use that 1800 number if you're on a different carrier?

 

No, that is for Telstra's Unwelcome Call centre (or was, when I left).

-Nick

 

then just contact your provider I'm sure they will have something set up......

 

It may take a little badgering to find it though - even most Telstra staff had no idea we had an UWC area - judging by the number of jobs I'd get through as a fault.

 

true but if the op really wants to sort this out they will stick wth this the other alternative is to get a new mobile number...


but logically to me .. keep meesages, report them to the police asap... and keep doing so however if it was one off thing then yeah start calling every you think has her number and would think prank calling her was funny and ask them nicely if it was them...

 

or dont answer private numbers. if its important, they'll leave a msg, and u can call them back.

 

does noone else wanna know what the contents of this disturbing phone call was?

 

not really.....

 

trust me, it was quite disturbing.

thanks for the advice guys.
so far this has been a single occurrence, which makes it all the more frustrating in terms of trying to figure out WTF is going on.
at the moment we're willing to put it down to someone playing a sick joke.