Phone Trips - an audio archive of the Phone Phreaking community. Phone phreaking was the practice of hacking into phone systems and networks in order to explore these networks and their connections [1 2]. Many people first heard about the phenomenon in a 1971 Esquire article, Secrets of the Little Blue Box, which included input from Captain Crunch. Crunch discovered that you could access telephone networks by blowing a 2600 Hz tone, from a whistle given away free in cereal boxes, into telephone handsets. "Have you ever heard eight tandems stacked up?" asked Crunch in the interview. Well, now we can, thanks to a large audio archive of phone phreaking. [more inside]
posted by carter on Aug 31, 2012 - 29 comments

If you thought phone phreaking was a dying art, you may be surprised to read the story of "Li'l Hacker", as told by old-school hack/phreaker Kevin Poulsen.
posted by Roach on Feb 29, 2008 - 11 comments

Three Blind Phreaks, See How They Scam ... The Badirs pulled off Mamet-worthy phone cons, employing cell phones, Braille-display computers, ace code-writing skills, and an uncanny ability to impersonate anyone from corporate suits to sex-starved females. On the phone, the brothers morph into verbal 007s, intimidating men, seducing women, and wheedling classified information from steely-voiced security personnel [...] An intense cat-and-mouse game developed: the Badirs on one side, with fraud investigator David Osmo and prosecutor Doron Porat on the other [...] his car's GPS system and email were repeatedly hacked. "There was a message waiting for him with his password in it," says Ramy, sounding quite pleased. "After that, he changed his password every hour before giving up on email altogether and using a typewriter."
posted by Blue Stone on Jan 30, 2004 - 7 comments

Joybubbles , aka Joe Engressia, is quite possibly the man who arguably first discovered blueboxing, the art of stuffing a 2600 Hz tone into a phone in order to make a free phone call, by blowing a Cap'n Crunch whistle.

I recently (re)discovered all this information after having a conversation about a guy in the phonebook who was listed as Joybubbles. I first heard about Joybubbles a number of years ago when I was involved in a local Ham Radio club, and we had to change the roster because the guy changed his name. He even answers his phone "Joybubbles". Thank you Google!
posted by manero on Nov 8, 2001 - 13 comments