Anyone know anything about phreaking?
Simon Rodgers
Posts: 4,693 Forum Member
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Has anyone here heard of phreaking and have they ever tried it or know of anyone who has?
I was just wondering what it is really all about and what people think of it. All I can find online is old factual information and no real opinions. Is it even legal?
I was just wondering what it is really all about and what people think of it. All I can find online is old factual information and no real opinions. Is it even legal?
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As per that first paragraph, it is an illegal activity.
And as per the DS posting guidelines:
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/announcement.php?f=108&a=319
Of course it's not legal, it's fraud.
Besides, it was killed off by modern out-of-band signalling systems decades ago, which is why you only find old articles.
International Direct Dialling was unavailable or very limited, and making operator calls (minimum 3 minutes) was prohibitively expensive. Even IDD was seriously expensive: IDD calls to New York City cost the equivalent of 50p/minute when the service started in 1970. That was the fastest rate at which the electromechanical meters could operate (1 pulse per second at 2d, 10/- per minute).
So apart from the intellectual challenge of hacking the systems, the forbidden fruit was much cheaper !
With Indirect Access, VOIP etc there's no financial incentive, and modern systems make it fraud harder to commit and easier to detect.
So basically phreaking is history. It's a bit like radio DX-ing; it was quite interesting to pull in a distant station when that was the only way to listen to it. But with everything available online or via satellite, there's not much reason to do so now.
There were basically two reasons for phreaking:-
- The academic challenge of finding loopholes in the system. A bit like hacking, code cracking, urban exploration, etc, the lure of doing something that's not normally possible.
- Bypassing call charges (illegal, of course).
With DX-ing, it's:-- The lure of doing something that's not normally possible, discovering reception paths that aren't usually open.
- Listening to a wider range of programmes.
You could also consider it as a bit similar to fishing: some people throw back what they have caught, whereas others take it home and eat it.So I accept that DX-ing is alive and well, but I'd suggest that nowadays it's probably more about atmospherics and identification of far away signals rather than actually listening to the programme content itself.
The challenge was multi-faceted - finding 'odd' telephone numbers from PABXs, which incidentally could be piggy-backed on to make long-distance calls for 'free' (usually to other phreaks). Also to find and use tones and codes that would spoof the exchanges to allow 'free' calls - this was the original and 'pure' phreaking activity. Making and modifying the phreaking equipment was all part of the game.
With modern digital technology, extremely cheap calling (in relative terms) and computers, phreaking is well-past it's sell-by date! The phreakers are now probably OAPs, and the modern equivalent is probably the benign hacker.
I remember in the 80's in the UK you could get electronic tone dial boxes to get free calls from phone boxes, but BT soon got wind of that and changed the technology.
I guess the phreaks were hippie types ie freaks, although it could be a pun on freq, or both . . .
Ah, the DTMF dialler and a System X/Y exchange payphone... I won't reveal how it was done (bet it's all over the net mind) but one quick call to 999 and let the conversation begin...! (Don't worry, the emergency services were never actually called)
And calling cards were the way to call abroad. Conference call with a bunch of people from Denmark, Sweden and USA for the whole night?
Obviously this is only stuff I've heard about....