Misdialed call

This aspect has been used in social science experiments designed to study the willingness of people to help strangers, and the extent to which this is affected by characteristics such as race.

On cellphones in countries where mobile plans charge for incoming calls, a wrong number may cost the subscriber one or more minutes.

A small, local business whose toll-free number differs in one digit from a large national franchise will typically receive multiple misdialled calls daily.

If 1-800-HOLIDAY (+1-800-465-4329) is Holiday Inn, an unscrupulous vendor could register 1-800-H0LIDAY (+1-800-405-4329, the same number with 'o' replaced by 'zero'), resell bookings for rooms in the same or a rival hotel and collect a profitable travel agent's commission.

One marketer can create multiple shell companies to operate as RespOrgs and register toll-free numbers as soon as their previous users disconnect service.

Judy Van Fossan of The Flower Corner in Clinton, Illinois, a tiny local shop which owned 1-800-CLUNKER (+1-800-258-6537), was inundated with more than 150 wrong numbers daily.

[14] In the 2020s, mobile phone spammers have used ostensibly misdirected text messages to attract pig butchering scam victims.

Between late 2021 and mid-2022, the FBI estimates that text message scams had cost 244 victims a total of US$42.7 million to cryptocurrency fraud.