Make a Prank Call and Not Be Caught

In today’s technologically advanced world, prank calling can be tricky. This is especially true since the invention of caller ID, which has forced pranksters to think of increasingly creative ways to conceal their identities and avoid getting caught. As a result, the art of prank calling has become quite sophisticated. A few simple tricks and guidelines are all you need to know to ensure your identity remains hidden during a prank call.

Steps

Getting Around Caller ID

1. Dial *67 before making the call. Using this code will keep your phone number from appearing on a caller ID display. This code works best when you are making one harmless prank call from a cell phone or home phone. The protection that *67 provides can be destroyed pretty quickly if it needs to be.
   • This code is fairly useless if the police get involved because they can bypass that code easily to get your information.
   • It usually won’t help you when you prank a toll-free number because those organizations typically use a different phone system.
   • Most internet-based services, such as Skype and Google Voice, won't let you dial *67 from their lines.
2. Use a prepaid cell phone. Prepaid cell phones, also known as burners, are sold at most gas stations and no personal information from you is required to buy them or use them. Keep in mind that they are equipped with GPS, so if you are using one while you’re at home, you can be traced that way.
   • Buying these cell phones can quickly turn into an expensive habit, since they aren't cheap. If you're a frequent prankster, burners aren't an ideal solution.
   • It's entirely possible that your friends and family may begin to suspect that you’re a drug dealer if they see you with burners frequently. This is a common stereotype created mostly by crime-related television shows.
3. Download a "burner" app. There are now phone apps that allow you to generate disposable phone numbers to make calls with, essentially keeping your real information hidden and your personal phone number clean. These apps provide the anonymity of a prepaid cell phone at a fraction of the cost, making them a very effective, convenient and cheap solution.
   • The most infamous app of this kind is called Burner, but there are a handful of others in existence.
4. Use internet phone services like Skype and Google Voice. These services are a great way to make prank calls because they aren’t tied to any location, making them really hard to trace. However, they aren’t impossible to trace by the police, especially if you give them a reason to do it, and you can be arrested.
   • Follow the same guidelines that you use for pranking with a cell phone or landline.
   • These internet services are usually free to use or have a very nominal monthly fee, making them financially feasible choices for pranking.
5. Use someone else’s phone. This won’t prevent trouble for the actual owner of the phone, but it will keep you from being caught. Try to be stealthy if you’re attempting this, especially if you’re a frequent prankster and your friends know it.
   • They’ll probably identify you as the culprit right away and start hiding their cell phones when you’re around.
   • If you are caught, prepare yourself to face a furious phone owner.
6. Stay away from local calls. This is especially true if you live in a small town, but it’s an excellent general rule that all pranksters should follow. When you make local prank calls, especially to multiple local numbers, and your victims end up calling the police, it’s incredibly easy for them to use a local phone company to discover the caller’s identity.
   • If you are prank calling someone who lives in another part of the country, it’s nearly impossible to trace because your victims aren’t able to call the local police to show up at your residence and give you a lecture.
7. Call from a pay phone. Pay phones still exist, although they are getting increasingly harder to find these days. If you’re a serious prankster, it would benefit you to track down the locations of payphones in your area.
   • Skip around so that you never make a prank call from the same pay phone twice in a row.
   • If you are making prank calls that are bothersome or upsetting enough for the person on the other end to contact the police, they will definitely start checking security camera footage from the surrounding areas and they’ll probably attempt to lift your fingerprints from the pay phone.

Keeping It Legal

1. Keep emergency services, police stations and fire departments off-limits. Prank calling any of these organizations is never wise and not recommended. If you do it, you will be traced and legal action will be taken against you.
   • "Swatting" is a relatively new trend that involves reporting a fake crime to the police that could result in a SWAT team being sent out. Never engage in this behavior. It can be punishable by prison and has been referred to as an act of terrorism.
   • There are so many other people and businesses out there to prank call – there is never any acceptable reason for pranking any of these organizations.
2. Do not impersonate a police officer or FBI agent in a prank call. Your chances of getting traced increase substantially if you impersonate law enforcement, and you can get in big trouble for doing it. Most people who impersonate law enforcement are doing so in order to commit a crime, so if you get caught doing this, you'll be assumed to be a criminal until proven otherwise and you will be arrested.
3. Avoid calling emergency and crisis hotlines. It’s not funny to prank call a suicide hotline and pretend you’re on the verge of killing yourself, and it’s been done a million times before anyway. In fact, you should avoid calling any kind of hotlines designed to help people.
   • It may seem like the perfect set up for hilarious pranks, but people can and do get arrested for this.
   • Within the past few years the DJ of a prank call radio show was arrested for pranking an anger management hotline. The police were at his house within 15 minutes.
4. Do not make threats or engage in hostile behavior. Threats of all kinds should be off-limits during prank calls, including bomb threats and physical threats. Even insinuating a threat is risky. When people feel threatened, emergency services and police officers usually get involved pretty quickly.
5. Avoid asking for any personal information. Surprisingly, it’s not that difficult to trick people out of their personal information, even their credit card numbers and other account numbers, by pretending to be someone’s bank or a legitimate sounding bill collector.
   • Even if you never intend to use any of this information and didn’t even write it down, your victim will probably realize their mistake not long after the phone call and assume you’re an identity thief.
   • They will call to the police to report attempted identify theft and you’ll be found out pretty quickly.
6. Do not record your prank calls. Doing so may seem harmless to you, but law enforcement considers it to be wiretapping. Currently, federal law on the subject states that it's not illegal if one or both parties have consented to the call. However, the state laws vary. Some of them are far stricter than the federal law, considering it to be illegal without written authorization from your victim. Since many pranksters make out-of-state prank calls, this can be a problem.
   • If you want to share a prank call recording publicly, such as on social media, the law requires that a “Recording Release and License” be signed by all participants on the call.
   • If you have a collection of recordings that you want to release and sell, things become even more complicated. Not only do you need the above-mentioned license, but doing this may also be considered copyright infringement, since the recorded call is a "joint work" and your victim technically owns half of this enterprise. Essentially, you would then owe them royalties.
   • Because of the extreme amounts of legal red tape surrounding the recording of prank calls, the best thing to do is avoid it completely.

Making the Call

1. Prepare in advance. Plan out your prank and what you want to say before you make the call. If you don’t sound sure of yourself when the victim answers, or if you stutter or hesitate, you’ll give yourself away. At the very least, have your opening line prepared.
   • If you are planning an elaborate prank, script it out before you call.
2. Keep it short. Long prank calls are hard to pull off, and the longer you have the other person on the line, the more suspicious they become. Keep your pranks short, sweet and silly. 5 minutes or less is a good goal for the length of a prank call.
3. Avoid calling the same number twice. Calling the same person over and over, no matter how hilarious it is to you, is harassment. If your victim feels harassed, the police will get involved and you’ll be caught.
   • Try to keep your pranks limited to one call per victim, or at the most, two.
   • Prank them, laugh, and move on from that phone number forever.
4. Stifle your laughter. Find your phone’s mute button and if you absolutely have to laugh, use it. Laughing at the very beginning of the call will give you away immediately, so try to hold it together. It’s okay to start laughing at the end, when the prank is starting to disintegrate and becoming obvious to the other person.
   • In fact, giggling at the end can actually benefit you, since it will show the person that it was just a harmless prank and not a big deal.
5. Keep your tone silly and lighthearted instead of serious. Serious pranks that upset other people are usually not very funny at all. They also escalate your chances of being caught by stressing your victim out so much that they feel the need to call the police. Keeping your prank calls on the silly side not only protects you from getting in trouble, but the calls are more fun to make and usually funnier, too.
   • Try to craft your pranks so that, by the end, the other person is laughing with you.
   • Occasionally your victim will outfox you and call you out on your prank, and then both of you will get a good laugh. Don’t take yourself too seriously!

Tips

• Here are some codes to block your phone number in different countries. If you're unsure about whether the code will work, give it a test run on a friend's phone first.
  • Argentina: *31# (landlines) or *31*, #31# (most mobile phone companies)
  • Australia: 1831 (landlines) or #31# (mobile phones)
  • Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland: *31*
  • Germany: On most landlines and mobiles, *31#, however some mobile providers use #31#.
  • Hong Kong: 133
  • Israel: *43
  • Italy: *67# (landlines) or #31# (most cell phone companies)
  • New Zealand: 0197 (Telecom and Vodafone)
  • South Africa: *31* (Telkom)
  • Sweden: #31#
  • UK: 141

Warnings

• Absolutely NEVER, under any circumstances, make a prank phone call to the police, fire department, ambulance service, or any other agency designed to protect and save people. The delay you cause them with your "fun" could very well be responsible for someone's death, could land you in serious legal trouble and can trace you directly to the phone you are using. Even if you block your number, the police can track you down.

Related Articles

• Make a Prank Call
• Prank Call Someone You Know
• Prank Call High School Kids

Sources and Citations

See also

• Make a Prank Call
• Make a Prank Call to a Friend
• Play 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' on a Phone
• Make a Reverse Prank Call
• Make a Prank Call with Celebrity Soundboard
• Prank Call Someone You Know