Got a call from "HOSTGATOR" on my CELL phone at 10AM today

[MisterEd]

Hmmm, I wonder: My FALLOVER number is my cell phone. I wonder if there is any connection there?

Hello,

Please private message me the phone numbers that you received these calls on in order that I can further investigate. HostGator and VOIPo are completely different companies - so I assure you that we are not sharing customers data and HostGator would not have any access to such information. If you can provide me with more information I will be able to further look into this and see if potentially there is any kind of routing issue causing this. Look forward to hearing back from you guys. Thanks!

[MisterEd]

My cell phone is my fallover number. I wonder if that has anything to do with this mystery?


Why does a moderator have to approve my last message for posting but not the one before it?

OK this message got posted immediately but the one before this did not but the one before that one did get posted.

[VOIPoBrandon]

Thank you all - I am continuing investigation and will update you all shortly. Thanks.

[MisterEd]

Ever find out any more information about this? Still wondering how they got my cell phone number.

Let's see if this innocuous message gets marked for "moderation" as many others have. <nope>

[VOIPoBrandon]

Hello,

Sorry for the delayed update.

Essentially what happened is the few of you that received these calls - the calls were never actually destined to you or your phone number.

The HostGator system routes through our network in a rather unique way over the rest of our traffic - so it avoids some of our general checks and balances of traffic routing over our network.

There is an issue where some of the calls are overlapping identities that we are working on resolving with HostGator.

This is pretty rare and has only happened a handful of times out of millions of calls per month.

Once again we assure you that these calls are not for telemarketing purposes and VOIPo has not and will not release any of our clients information.

[MisterEd]

I have absolutely no idea what you said however it still doesn't explain how they got my CELL PHONE NUMBER which virtually no one except my family and 3 or 4 friends here in NJ has (but is used as my VOIPO fall-over number and was given to VOIPO tech support to call me back). Had it been my VOIPO numbers that was called it might make a little sense how whatever you said happened but it was my private cell phone number with no connection to the VOIPO network in any way UNLESS VOIPO just happened to be down when they called and it came to my cell number as fall-over but then I would have seen it in my call log .... I think.

Edit: Nope. No calls from HOSTGATOR to either of my VOIPO lines on or around that date or time. It was a direct call to my cell number. I don't care what TYPE of call it was (telemarketing or otherwise) only how they got my cell number.

[VOIPoBrandon]

I have absolutely no idea what you said however it still doesn't explain how they got my CELL PHONE NUMBER which virtually no one except my family and 3 or 4 friends here in NJ has (but is used as my VOIPO fall-over number and was given to VOIPO tech support to call me back). Had it been my VOIPO numbers that was called it might make a little sense how whatever you said happened but it was my private cell phone number with no connection to the VOIPO network in any way UNLESS VOIPO just happened to be down when they called and it came to my cell number as fall-over but then I would have seen it in my call log .... I think.

Edit: Nope. No calls from HOSTGATOR to either of my VOIPO lines on or around that date or time. It was a direct call to my cell number. I don't care what TYPE of call it was (telemarketing or otherwise) only how they got my cell number.

Again - HostGator did not call your phone number directly, one of their calls had an overlapping ID on our network with one of your calls that caused this issue in which routed to your failover phone number.

[MisterEd]

Again - HostGator did not call your phone number directly, one of their calls had an overlapping ID on our network with one of your calls that caused this issue in which routed to your failover phone number.

Again, maybe you want to explain what that means before the snow shovel or the pooper scooper has to come out?

[VOIPoBrandon]

In the most simple terms - our system normally generates Call-ID's for all calls - HostGator bypasses portions of our system to inject calls directly into our network and they generate their own Call-ID's - because they have a high volume of calls. In this case the Call-ID that they generated happened to match one of your Call-ID's - the system then new that the call was not a valid call and so it used a failure route - so on your account used a failover route which happened to be your cell phone number. So essentially HostGator's call was actually TO someone else but they were misrouted to you - because their Call-ID matched a Call-ID that was already in our system and the two calls got mixed up as all Call-ID's must be unique. The only reason this happened is because HostGator bypasses part of our network to route them directly. Typically with all of our customers we generate the Call-ID's ourselves - since HostGator bypasses our regular system and goes directly into our core system - they generate their own and in this case it happened to overlap.

I've looked for cases of this in our logs and I've only see it a handful of times out of millions and millions of calls.

We are going to work with HostGator to make sure that all Call-ID's are unique so it does not happen again.

[MisterEd]

I've looked for cases of this in our logs and I've only see it a handful of times out of millions and millions of calls.

Just my luck .... I get in on this "1 in millions and millions" chance yet I can't even win $50 in the lottery.