For the car and twenty-five dollars. . .

[rolanni]

. . .somewhere on this blessed device (aka the Droid2) there is a place where I can input the text I want to show up on YOUR caller ID whenandif I call you

Where is it?

Abundant Spanish Aunts!

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Apparently people writing apps to display CallerID (both Apple and Android) have been sued because some company has a patent on it (even though the patent was applied for in 2002, long after CallerID and looking up the number in a local list to display the caller's name had become common).

It is illegal (certainly in Europe, and I believe also in the US) to make a call with a caller number which you don't own ('spoofing'). If you do own it (for instance business phones which want the return to be to a central switchboard) then it is allowed. Technically, of course, there's nothing stopping the calling software from changing it to any number, but anyone doing so will be caught, usually by their connectivity supplier (who can correlate the numbe with the account).

Note that this is only numbers (and a couple of special characters, like * and #), alphabetic charcaters are not possible.

In addition to this some cellphones allow (and the protocol used in GSM and WCDMA supports even if the phone doesn't) an alphanumeric ID which can be set to a user string. This is sent to the called end in addtition to the CID (it doesn't replace it), and the called end can choose to display either, both or neither of the pieces of information.

Note that the caller ID is always sent, by those networks which can handle it (all except a few old landline networks), to the called end. It can be suppressed by the terminating network (for instance some require an additional fee to provide CallerID, as a revenue-generating exercise because it doesn't cost them any extra), but telling your phne that you want to be anonymous doesn't actually change that, all it does is set a flag to tell the receiving equipment to not display it. Consumer equipment has to honour that, but 'official' equipment (like emergency services) can deisplay it regardless of the caller's preferences.

In this case, with Android, it seems that the software isn't in place to send the alphanumeric ID. This seems, as far as I have been able to ascertain, to be a general software deficiency. (The way the CallerID at the receiving end just says CELL PHONE instead of the number may indicate that the CID has been suppressed by the calling user's options, those should be available in a configuration option.

In order to test whether CallerID is being blocked by the sending phone, try calling home and prefixing the number by *82 (*UB) in the US (1470 in the UK, on GSM networks *31#, different numbers in other countries). That may enable it. Otherwise, call the phone (or network) provider to see whether the phone has an automatic block and if so how to release it.

(There's a fairly comprehensive Wikipedia article here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID), it's where I got the information about prefix codes outside GSM/UK.)

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I didn't know what the feature was called (besides Caller ID, which returned me 'way too much of the Wrong Stuff), so couldn't deploy google-foo

In the interest of Compleat Reporting, I tried the *82, which didn't produce results. Still CELL PHONE ME. Has a certain flow to it, actually. P'rhaps I'll change my name :)