800 sex-chat line percentage?

February 2, 2006 9:46 PM

What percentage of 800 numbers are sex-chat lines?

About once a week for the last year I've seen a new article about some business or government office that accidentally pointed its customers at an 800 sex-chat line, usually due to a one or two digit typo in their publications.

With 10 million potential 800 numbers, this strains my credulity a bit. Does anyone know how many sex-chat lines there actually are compared to other 800 users?

Related: If I purchase an 800 number, what are the chances it has been a sex-chat line recently, or will become one the minute I give it up?

posted by tkolar to Work & Money (7 answers total)

Regardless of the total number of sex-chat 800 lines, this anecdote needn't stretch credulity. If the government office had a three-digit prefix that could, by a simple typo, be translated to 739, they'd be wandering into a mine field, I reckon.
posted by cortex at 9:54 PM on February 2, 2006

Once, as a test* (in 1999 or so), I started randomly dialing 800 numbers using every combination of sex-related word I could. Even combinations that didn't make much sense were usually phone sex lines. Much like domain names, anything you can think of is probably already in use.

Isn't this why we now have (888) and (877)? No more numbers left?

*As part of an ongoing contest to find the worst possible thing to leave on someone's voicemail at work.
posted by bh at 2:07 AM on February 3, 2006

Also consider the fact that all the typos that lead to a non-sex 800 number generally don't make the news. So you're only going to hear about the ones that do, no matter what the percentages are.
posted by mikepop at 6:20 AM on February 3, 2006

Note also that some sex lines will purposefully choose numbers that are one or two typos away from a more legit number, simply to catch people making said typos as described. Same deal for website locations (e.g. whitehouse.com vs whitehouse.gov).
posted by cyrusdogstar at 7:25 AM on February 3, 2006

as someone who worked for a major teleco (perhaps THE major teleco) in the toll-free number division, i would venture a guess that much less than 1/2 of the numbers are sex lines. i know we did not accept accounts for sex-lines and we had more than 50% of the available numbers.
the chance of it recently being a sex-line is quite slim and the process before you obtain the number requires it be un-used for 120 days and available for the old owner to take back.
actually there are less and less 800 numbers in use everyday, everyone is switching to web customer service or to pay lines. so you may be able to get the number you want.
sadly i no longer work for that group so i can't get you actual numbers (although i don't think anyone has that info either as no company can see any other company's customer info)
posted by annoyance at 7:29 AM on February 3, 2006

Isn't this why we now have (888) and (877)? No more numbers left?

Yes. 866 is now in use for toll-free, as well.
posted by Rash at 11:34 AM on February 3, 2006

as an aside, the industry was all set to release 855 & 844 at once about 4 years ago as demand for 888 and 877 was so insane. but people decided they did not need to grab every toll free option (i.e. 800-FLOWERS, 888-FLOWERS, 877-FLOWERS, etc) so many less 866 numbers were sold.
anyway, 855 and 844 never did get opened, at least not yet.
opening night was always fun, code written for months if not years all to run for about 30 seconds and grab as many primo numbers as possible. good times.
posted by annoyance at 1:07 PM on February 3, 2006