786-879-6669

Over the past couple of days, I've missed two calls from the following number: 786-879-6669.

The digits did not look familiar to me, so I popped them in google to see who could be calling me in the middle of the afternoon.

The results of my search were a bit startling. Here's what I found:

786-879-6669 is the phantom in your phone. If you are a Cingular or Sprint cellular subscriber you may have already been unwittingly capped by 786-879-6669 — check your phone logs to make sure — or you may soon get hit. Thousands have been struck in the last week alone.
Some believe 786-879-6669 is one of three things:

1. A viral terrorism attack to aggravate people and disrupt the ordinary flow of phone service in response to the immigration policy debate currently going on in the American government.

2. An automated sales pitch in Spanish for a Florida timeshare.

3. A random War Dialing campaign intended to annoy you and cost you cellular air time answering the call or calling into your Voice Mail to delete the call.

People are getting calls from 786-879-6669 on cellular phones that have never been shared, publicized or given to anyone outside the immediate family.

Do not answer a call from 786-879-6669. Do not place a call to 786-879-6669.

Clearly, I hope this is just some kind of phone-spam and not "a viral terrorism attack." I never got around to adding my number on the Do Not Call list, so maybe I should expect this. But still, it's a bit spooky (and annoying). This is almost worse than the time that I received about 15 calls in one day from from women (who sounded elderly, and southern) asking for "Clara." Who knows how they all got my number, but somehow I got entangled in some sort of drama involving Clara, who I determined was very sick or missing based on her friends' voicemails ( guess they couldn't quite decipher between the "C" and the "S" on the other line--or the younger voice that was obviously void of any twang): "Clara, this is your friend Louise. We're all thinkin' and prayin' for you and want you to get betta ril' soon." I was quite pained by the fact that it was me, not Clara, who was the recipient of these calls, as it wasn't like there was any way I could track her down and pass the messages along. Eventually, the ladies stopped calling (whether that was a good or bad sign for Clara, I'll never know).

Anyway, I posted this as a warning of sorts to all you Cingular or Sprint users out there. If and when 786-879-6669 appears on your cell phone's screen, just ignore it!