You get a weird number on your phone: 5005706806. You don’t recognize it. They didn’t leave a voicemail. One quick internet search and suddenly you are down a rabbit hole of speculative thinking. Several internet forums are full of reports of suspicious calls from this exact number, including the potential for scams. While others believe there’s a much, much sweeter answer to be found: fruit flavored drink.
If you’ve stumbled upon the number 5005706806, you’re among a small but growing community of digital detectives who are intrigued by this modern mystery. Is it a telemarketer, a slick robocall con, or just a product identifier for Skittles? The truth is surprisingly complex.
This post will discuss the two primary theories on 5005706806. We will investigate evidence that it is a spam number and the twin theory behind the use of product barcodes. Eventually you’ll have a better idea of what this number might be and how to deal with such situations in the future.
The Scam Theory: A Rash of Sketchy Calls
The most frequent scam involves spam callers or texts. There’s a pattern of confusion and suspicion, when perusing Reddit, 800Notes or WhoCallsMe for instance, among users across the country.
What Users Are Reporting
A lot of folks are getting a call from 5005706806, ignoring it and then being surprised to find that there is no answer on their voicemail. This is the textbook sign of an autodialer, the kind often employed by telemarketers and robocall operations. These systems are set up to dial thousands of numbers in quick succession to identify which lines are active.
The following are some typical online comments:
- “Received a call from 5005706806 and they hang off when you receive, about six seconds. No voicemail.”
- “My phone warned me this was a suspect caller. I didn’t pick up.”
- “Is this a marketing number? They’ve called me 3 times this week.”
Sheriff Touts Anti-Caravan Rhetoric Spreads Fear In some cases, none of this fear-mongering anti-caravan rhetoric has a specific message or credible caller. In the absence of anything else, the human reaction is to assume worst-case scenario and many people have tagged it as a scam.
Why Are There So Many of These Calls?
Unwanted calls from unknown numbers is a common problem. These calls often originate from:
- Telemarketing Companies: Corporations use predictive dialers to contact large numbers of people for marketing purposes or opinion polling. These calls can be irritating, but are not always malevolent.
- Robocall Scams: More nefarious robocalls come from scammers calling with faked (spoofed) or hidden numbers trying to get you to give up personal information. They’ll often pose as banks, government agencies or tech support to create an urgent situation and a fear-based response.
- Service Alerts: If you use a legitimate company website (e.g., bank, delivery service, healthcare provider), they may occasionally communicate with you through an automated alert, verification code (OTP) or appointment reminder. However numbers can be known or assumed in advance.
The number 5005706806 seems to be a number used for some structured marketing as it is established by the pattern of its use (This could work perfectly fine with many other numbers). It’s a 10-digit format that looks like it could be an ordinary U.S. phone number, but there isn’t evidence its registered to anyone in particular or to any specific company. That kind of ambiguity is why it’s so ripe for spamming and scamming: It’s nearly impossible to trace things back to their origin.
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The Skittles Theory: Just Desserts?
Just when you’re about to block the number and forget all about it, the investigation makes a surprising turn. Nestled among the search results, there is one odd bit of information about 5005706806: It apparently connects to a candy-flavored drink instead of a caller.
The Barcode Connection
Multiple online product listings, on retail and wholesale sites among others, list 5005706806 as the barcode for a “Skittles Fruit Flavored Drink Original (14 oz).” This is the European Article Number, or Universal Product Code, which is essentially a number signifying that this product is sold in retail stores all over.
Barcodes are critical to our modern economy. They allow retailers to:
- Track inventory levels automatically.
- Get people through checkout faster with scanners.
- Keep pricing and product details up-to-date.
Every product SKU, regardless of size or flavor, gets its own unique barcode. In this case, 5005706806 would be the code that a scanning device would capture to charge customers for a 14-ounce bottle of original Skittles drink.
Verifying the Barcode
If 5005706806 really is a bar code, it ought to be identifiable by looking in public databases. From an online service like UPCitemDB or Barcode Lookup you can click in the number and it should show the product number.
But in this case the evidence is more mixed. It is indexed in some providers for the Skittles drink, though less consistently across top barcode databases. This could mean a few things:
- It’s an internal SKU: Some companies may use internal Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) that do not have a matching entry in the global GS1 system, which governs UPCs and EANs. Those figures would remain visible only on that cooperating company’s – or their immediate partners’ – systems.
- It’s a regional, or older, barcode: It may be a specific number assigned to products in one region (though that is less popular than assigning the same bar code globally for inventory control), or it could have been from an earlier batch of products that are no longer commonly found.
- It’s a data entry error: The number could even have been posted incorrectly to a handful of online product listings, an out-of-context numeral that has sent some internet sleuths off in another direction.
In the absence of confirmation by the manufacturer (Mars, Inc.) and widespread use in global databases there are grounds to support but not substantiate the barcode hypothesis. It’s an intriguing counter theory to the scam claim, but it doesn’t account entirely for why people would be getting phone calls from this number.
The Internet Investigates: Connecting the Dots
5005706806 is a mystery that underscores the power of digital communities. As people encounter something unknown, they search through Google and discussion forums to pool their knowledge. This communal quest to track down the source of the calls is a modern-day mystery.
Why People Search
This is the primary motivator in looking for a number like 5005706806: clarity and safety. Generally, users are trying to address three key questions:
- Who called me? The search is a quest to attach a name or a face to the anonymous line of digits.
- Is it a threat? As phishing attacks and identity theft go, it’s easy to understand why people might be wary of a scam.
- Is it important? There’s also always that little worry that the missed call was from a doctor’s office or a potential employer, or something that wasn’t spam.
- The very act of searching is an act of reclaiming. It’s an attempt to demystify the unknown and decide whether or not to answer, block or ignore a potential future call.
What the Digital Trail Reveals
The hunt for 5005706806 frequently takes users to phone tracking sites where they can post comments about their experiences. These are your call-blockers, a crowd-based defense against unwanted calls. But they can also be an echo chamber of rumor.
And while many of those reports classify the number as spam, they provide scant detail on the nature of the calls. Most people either hang up or refuse to answer at all. This dearth of original evidence makes it difficult to confirm the intent of the caller. The same number could belong to a benign polling company one day and a rogue scammer the next, since spoofed numbers tend to get recycled across various operations.
Moreover, in some databases 5005706806 is not even listable as an existant phone number which complicates matters. It might be a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone number, which is also made and used online, and doesn’t have the same system notching as landline phones do — making the calls even more difficult to track.
How to Protect Yourself
The real persona behind 5005706806 is still unclear. It may be a spam caller, a product barcode or both. It was possible the number was a valid barcode but one that scammers had hijacked and used for spoofing, since it resembled an actual U.S. phone number.
- So let’s err on the side of caution. Below is a list of do’s and dont’s when you get a call from this unknown number or ANY unknown number:
- Don’t Answer: If you don’t know the number, don’t answer the phone. Legit callers will almost always leave a message with who they are and what the call is about.
- Never Give Out Personal Information: If you actually do pick up, never give out personal information such as your address, social security number or other financial information. Even small bits of information can be used by scammers to help them build a profile for identity theft.
- Block and Report: Block and report using your phone’s built-in block feature. You can also “report” it to your mobile carrier as spam (for example, by forwarding suspicious texts to 7726, which spells “SPAM”). You may also file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
- Trust Your Instincts: If something about a call doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t. Hang up immediately.
The Verdict: An Unsolved Mystery
So is 5005706806 a predator or Skittle drink? The answer probably isn’t an either/or. The above evidence points to two parallel (if not unrelated) identities for this number. One is a number that identifies a consumer product in the world of retail logistics. One is a phone number — real or spoofed — that someone is calling you from for various unknown purposes.
It’s likely just a coincidence the overlap makes for interesting comparison. It’s a great way to think about how numbers in our digital world can mean different things depending on context. Unless some single-point of linked truth in the information-bucket pours forth, 5005706806 will continue to hide in pixels on the internet. Instead, for now the best advice seems to be keep your guard up. When you get a call from an unknown number, a good amount of skepticism is your best defense. Or, if you’re feeling playful, watch the point at which things “taste the rainbow” in real time and see if there’s any truth to this Skittles theory.
Frequently Asked Questions
What To Do If You Get a Call By 5005706806?
The best course of action is not to answer the phone at all. If you do, don’t give out any personal information and hang up if the call seems suspicious. From there you can block the number from calling again.
Is 5005706806 definitely a scam?
Whilst from many users marked this number as a spam or telemarketing, no evidence has been found to prove that it will be used in scam. The tie-in with the Skittles drink barcode leaves its true nature a bit vague. It’s the kind of thing better approached with some skepticism.
What’s up with a bar code for a phone number?
Many scammers employ what is known as “spoofing” technology, which makes it appear that they are calling from a number other than their own. They can spoof any number to show up on your caller ID. 5005706806 may have been selected simply because its ten-digit format resembles a genuine U.S. phone number so appears more believable.
How do I get spam calls to STOP!?
Sign up your number for the National Do Not Call Registry. Use the spam filters that come with your phone, and consider installing a third-party call-blocking app. Finally, exercise caution about where you share your phone number on the internet.
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