I talked to a good buddy yesterday who told me he’s been on an incredible run of prank calls of late. Here’s the technique he was using for making his telephone prank calls:

Late Night Calls to Non-Restaurants

He selected businesses to call on the telephone that were open after midnight that were not restaurants. Restaurants don’t make good targets for prank calls because they are simply too huslte-bustle to get anyone to talk on the phone for more than a minute or so. So he turned his attention to hotels, bail bondsmen, all night retailers, and porn shops. He told me the porn shops made the best target because they were open yet extremely slow at the late hour.

Made Telephone Prank Calls from his Home Phone

My friend used his home phone and with some friends called the above places. He placed his phone on speakerphone so that his friends could hear the hilarity and used *67 to block his private information. (I advised him that this would suffice but that there were better ways to prank call which I’ll get into in a minute.)

Used Internet Soundboards

He didn’t want to use his own voice so he did a search for internet soundboards which are collections, in the voice of a particular celebrity, of various phrases and sayings. These phrases are usually pulled from an actor or comedian’s movies and can be used to conduct an entire phone call once you get the handle of it.

Among the most popular celebrity soundboards are those of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joe Pesci, and Tom Cruise. But there are many, many more. Each soundboard has about 30-100 phrases which can be called on with the touch of a mouse.

(TIP: If you do call a restaurant, make sure to use the Jack Black soundboard which is hilarious for calling restaurants.)

Schwarzenegger is probably my favorite. It is absolutely classic and good for beginners who are just getting the hang of telephone prank calls.

Used the Soundboards to Prank

With his friends listening, he used the soundboards to bust some hilarious prank calls on unsuspecting businesses. He told me that a couple of times, people actually caught on to the fact that they were being prank called but he told me it just made it more funny.

He told me that he had a ton of fun making these telephone prank calls, spending over an hour busting hilarity on unsuspecting porn shop employees. Sounded like a look fun, I must confess.

However, he told me that there were a couple of things he needed improvement on. He told me that he wanted to do two things that he wasn’t sure how to do. First, he wanted to be able to record the calls, because some of them were so funny that he wanted to hear them again and again, but he was not sure how to do that. And, he wanted to know if there was a better way to conceal his number so that he could call people he knew without PRIVATE appearing on the caller ID.

Luckily, I had a simple answer to both questions. There is a company, called 123Spoof., that gives you the opportunity to accomplish both of those things for a very tiny fee. What 123Spoof does is allows you to record all of your telephone prank calls so that if they work out well you can put them on a website or CD or even email them to friends.

123Spoof. also allows you to make telephone prank calls from your home phone, BUT have your number appear on a target’s caller ID as whatever number you specify. For instance, you can call your buddy Jack and have your number appear on his caller ID as a movie theatre, mutual friend, or cab company. You can have any other business or person appear on the caller ID of a target. This is a great feature.

With this information in hand he told me was going to sign up at 123Spoof.. The next time I hear from him, I expect to have some more great telephone prank call stories.

In order to make a prank call you will need your target’s phone number and must have access to a phone (duh!). The first step is always to make certain that the target can not discern your telephone number when you call. Before the days of caller ID this was a somewhat easy task. You just had to ring up the target’s number.

Today, you have to be a little more proactive in order to conceal your number. From telephones you can use the per call blocking feature by dialing *67 before the number. (To test *67 on your phone you can use it to dial 800/562-5588.) This has the advantage of blocking your name and number from the target’s caller ID.

However, the target’s caller ID will show either PRIVATE or INFO NOT SENT in this case. Because of this, your target’s suspicion might be raised that he could be the victim of a prank or nefarious call. Therefore, we prank call professionals use more sophisticated methods.

There are companies which, believe it or not, offer services just for this purpose. The best of these service providers is 123Spoof which allows you to use the actual number of any person or from any business and have THAT number appear on the caller ID of your target.

Yeah. Just read that sentence again and think of the possibilities!

For prank callers this service is nothing short of a revelation. If I want to call my buddy Joe from my phone and have the call show on Joe’s caller ID as from our mutual friend Tony, I can do it easily. And it works every time.

Even better, the good folks at 123Spoof have added a plethora of other features for use during prank calls. With their system you can completely disguise your voice (even changing sex from male to female) and you can record your entire conversation so you can play it again and again for extra laughs.

Clearly, if you have a sense of humor, you can see how this would be useful. You can literally amuse yourself for hours with these features. Playing pranks on friends, associates, businesses… Whatever your devious mind can dream up you will be able to achieve.

Ah, the miracle of technology.

REMEMBER: Prank calls are to be made in good jest only. Telephone calls which threaten or anyway break the law can be prosecuted.