Comments on: The Phone Stories: VOICEMAIL

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 08:28:25 +0000

I just remembered that when I was a kid, in my area at least, all phones used to ring by themselves after dialing their own 7-digit number with the two first digits inverted. That even worked with public phones (which usually had their own number written on them even though they didn’t allow incoming calls).
That was fun to show off to other kids, until it stopped working after a while.

By: Flack

Flack — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 06:41:58 +0000

I remember one other funny trick I used to use. Before I knew how to perform ANI’s and LONG before the Internet provided reverse lookups to any schlep who wanted one, I knew how to get people’s names and addresses from their phone numbers, a trick I routinely performed for friends and fellow modemers. The setup was always the same; they’d give me a number, and I’d give them some song and dance about how I had to hack into the phone company (which was no easy feat; their password was a hundred characters long and changed daily, or so I said), and then get the information. This would take at least an hour or so.

Then, I’d walk down the block to the local library, who, among their other reference materials, had a phone book that had both regular entries and reversed-entries, listed by phone numbers.

A little ingenuity and creativity went a long way back then.

By: Flack

Flack — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 06:21:00 +0000

Isn’t it funny what used to impress people back then? Knowledge was king, especially pre-Internet. I remember when I was really young, someone told me a three-digit number that you can dial on basically any payphone to “reset” it. By dialing these three three numbers, pretty much any payphone will go dead for a couple of minutes. It still works today. Occasionally I’ll show someone (without showing them the numbers, of course!) and I still get the same wood I got when I was 12.

I also remember a phone number that I got from a BBS that was supposed to determine whether or not your phone was being tapped. It played a sweeping tone, and if the tone stopped, you were being tapped — or so the legend went. I never heard of anyone who ever heard the tone stop sweeping. For all I know we were dialing a tornado siren.

By: David Dickinson

David Dickinson — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 23:33:05 +0000

This brings back great memories. As Thomas mentioned above, you could always run into unsecure PBXs, which allowed you to dial out. Those were gold back in the early-mid 1980s.

Back then you could war dial a local company’s exchange, most companies had their own XXX designation, and find the most interesting things.

Today if you did it you would be arrested. Times have really changed.

By: sclozza

sclozza — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 09:29:52 +0000

What a great story! It’s always good when something being scammed turns out to go unnoticed for years and years.

There was a pay phone around the corner from me (replaced now) that used to give out free long distance calls. It was a little temperamental, but given enough coercion, you could get a bit of fun out of it.

These things seem to suit male teenagehood in suburbia. You have nothing but time on your hands, and for the most part can go about your mischief unsupervised.