Prank call facts for kids

A prank call is a telephone call where the person making the call tries to play a practical joke on the person who answers. It's often a type of call meant to annoy someone. Sometimes, making prank calls can be against the law.

Recordings of prank calls became popular in the late 1970s. Musicians and sound engineers would share these funny recordings on cassette tapes. Some of the most famous early prank calls were the Tube Bar prank calls, which involved a man named Louis "Red" Deutsch. The famous comedian Jerry Lewis also loved making phone pranks. Recordings of his jokes from the 1960s are still shared today.

Even famous people have been pranked! Elizabeth II, the Queen, was once tricked by a Canadian DJ named Pierre Brassard. He pretended to be the Canadian Prime Minister and asked her to record a speech. Another time, a radio station in Miami called the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. They pretended to be the Cuban president Fidel Castro. Later, they pranked Castro by pretending to be Chávez. Castro got very angry when he found out it was a joke!

Early Prank Calls

People have been making prank calls for a long time. A British scientist named R. V. Jones wrote about some early examples in his book. Around 1933, a physicist named Carl Bosch tricked a journalist. He made the journalist believe he could see him through the phone!

Jones himself also played a prank around the same time at Oxford University. He pretended to be a phone engineer. He convinced a student that his phone was broken. The student was told to sing loudly into the phone and even hold it by its cord while standing on one leg! His friend, who was part of the joke, had to stop him from putting the phone in a bucket of water.

Staying Anonymous

Today, it's much harder for prank callers to hide. This is because of caller ID, which shows who is calling. Most phone companies let you hide your number using a special code (like *67 in North America). But many people don't answer calls from hidden numbers.

Also, governments can sometimes listen in on calls, making pranks easier to trace. Some people try to call from payphones to stay hidden. However, payphones are much less common now. New phone technologies also make it harder for pranksters to remain a secret.

Another way to hide is by using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). With some VoIP services, the phone number might not even exist. These calls are very hard to trace because they can go through many different computers and countries. It would take a lot of effort for police to trace a simple prank call.

Pranks on Political Leaders

Sometimes, prank callers manage to reach important political leaders. In 2005, a radio station in Spain pranked the new president of Bolivia, Evo Morales. The prankster pretended to be the Spanish Prime Minister. He congratulated Morales and made jokes about other leaders not calling him.

In a different kind of prank, in 2020, a Russian politician named Alexei Navalny used a prank call. He tricked a secret service agent into admitting that they had tried to poison him. In 2022, two Russian citizens pranked former US President George W Bush. During that call, Bush said he wanted Ukraine to join NATO.

Prank Calls and the Internet

The internet has become a big place for prank calls. There are many online radio stations just for prank calls. They often play a constant stream of different prank calls that people have sent in. Programs like Ventrilo also let people make prank calls to a smaller group of friends in real-time.

The internet has helped many people share their prank calls and create communities. Prank calls can be live or recorded. Websites like Prankcast.com let people who host prank call shows tell their followers when they are live. Listeners can then chat with the host and talk about the calls as they happen. Thanks to social networking and people sharing their own content, prank calls can become very popular online.

However, websites like Craigslist have a problem. They let people post phone numbers without checking if the person owns the number. A common trick is to post someone's name and phone number in a fake ad. This can cause the person to get many unwanted calls, especially if the prankster posts it in a different time zone. Craigslist and similar sites usually don't share who posted the ad without a special court order.

See also

In Spanish: Broma telefónica para niños