| . | Phone Phreaking! |
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Since the phone company installed the first telephone exchange, a certain segment of the population has been focused upon mastering the system from outside. Phone Phreaks, telephone system hackers, are still out there today though the mystique is gone forever. Some wished to subvert the system for their own profit, others found pleasure in discovering the system's weakness for sport. Still others discovered a perverse joy in living within the telephone system - almost as if living on a separate plane of existance. They were the most fascinating of all. Phone Phreaking hit a high point in the mid 1970s when Bell completed its major conversion to tone access systems. The telephone company, though integrated with an emerging computer technology, was still a major hardware-oriented system. The Following links are interesting - especially the feature article for "Esquire", called "Secrets of the Little Blue Box". Click on the telephones below! |
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"Secrets of the Little Blue Box" Written by Ron Rosenbaum Esquire Magazine, October 1971 |
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"How The Secret Telephone War Came to Britain." THE LONDON SUNDAY TIMES, OCTOBER 15 1972 Insight on Phone Phreakes -- the pranksters who have turned the world's telephone systems into an electronic playground. Their `Bleeper' allows them to make calls free. |
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