Phil online

My mother-in-law has a phone number very close to to 867-5309, the subtitular phone number from Tommy Tutone’s one-hit-wonder, “Jenny (867-5309)”. When I call her I remember her number by singing the tune in my head and transposing some digits. It’s a useful mnemonic for me.

My wife doesn’t do mnemonics. She accidentally dialed Jenny’s number instead her mom’s. When she did, before the ringback occurred, the phone played “Jenny I’ve got your number 8-6-7-5-3-0-9″. And then it started ringing.

Whoa! What the heck was that? Cool trick!

I’ve since tried a few other area codes (212-867-5309) and verified it happens on all of them.

It appears to be a Vonage trick, since I have Vonage as my sole phone service provider in my home. I tried it on other phones (my cellphone, my office phone) and none of them do anything like this. Ergo, it must be some geek trick that someone played with at Vonage. Maybe they were showing of the new Custom Ringback Feature to the VP of marketing. (Apparently he wasn’t impressed because this feature is not offered to customers yet.)

I tried Googling to see if anyone else found Jenny’s number on the wall, but all my searches led to some news article about a guy auctioning off 212-867-5309 on eBay, and someone hacking Vonage with the same number.