I'm working my way back through your blog (saw it in the B3TA newsletter). I know this is a rather old post, but YES, in the United States any phone number which begins with 1-800 or 1-888 is a 'toll-free' number, which the company pays for. I imagine trans-atlantic calls would cost a pretty penny. However, most of the numbers listed in Spam are complete hogwash, and may be the phone numbers of companies that are innocent of the whole 'annoy and pester' marketing scheme. Hope that helps.