Originally Posted by
Athena53
They know where you are- location of the server is a pretty good indicator. When traveling outside of the US I've gotten messages that I can't access a particular survey because I"m not in the US. (It's not perfect- I once had issues getting into a Fidelity account when in India and when I called they asked if I'd been in HK. I hadn't, but my employer had servers in HK.)
It's just another grab for information. It's one of the reasons I keep a landline as the equivalent of a spamcatcher e-mail address.
Well, you can fool them with a proxy server and pretend you are in a specific country (just like your example with HK, but deliberate). You can even use a site that receives SMS for free (if nobody has used it before, as the celular number must be unique).