4 ms·
Hopefully the statute of limitations has run out, but but when I was young and stupid, I "hacked" a local telephone box in the area to route a payphone line to
by bityard 3y ago
Hopefully the statute of limitations has run out, but but when I was young and stupid, I "hacked" a local telephone box in the area to route a payphone line to my house.
I grew up in a supremely rural area. We were not at all wealthy but still one of the few households that could even afford a computer. The computer came with a modem and I wanted to use it to connect to the world. The problem was that every phone call beyond a 1-mile radius or so counted as "long distance," so calling virtually anywhere cost a certain fixed rate per minute. We experimented with CompuServe and Prodigy at various points but the long distance charges alone made it not worthwhile.
I eventually got to learning how physical phone lines worked and figured out that the same telephone box next to the road served both my house and the payphone for the store nearby. Long story short, I bridged the payphone's line to an unused pair at my house and started calling BBSes around the nation that way. I was always careful not to use it during the day, when someone might actually need to use the payphone.
Of course, it only took a couple of months for the phone company to figure out something was amiss. They undid my handiwork and put a lock and seal on the box. They COULD have charged my parents with theft of service or at least delivered a stern warning but evidently they did not or I certainly would have gotten an earful over it.
About a year later, the phone company brought in local dial-up Internet to the town.
Footnote: I found a list of toll-free BBSes somewhere and there were HUNDREDS of numbers listed. I tried them all. Only maybe a dozen were actually free BBSes that you could create an account and log into, the rest were either dead, fax machines, or systems for some specific purpose. Aside from one fairly popular message board that eventually got shut down, it turns out there wasn't much to do on any of them.
- roygbiv2 3y ago>calling virtually anywhere cost a certain fixed rate per minute. This is how it worked in the UK. Calling anywhere cost per min and I racked up HUGE phone bills in the early days.
- artofcode 3y agoI can still remember my dad's reaction when the first proper high phone bill came in... Oh boy...
- qingcharles 3y agoYes, it was brutal in the UK in the mid-90s. That first £1000 phone bill almost had my parents divorce me.
- cjbprime 3y agoSame. I remember the day the letter came from BT suggesting that my parents switch to the "Heavy User" tariff. I'd been using the nearest CompuServe POP in a different city.
- roygbiv2 3y agoHaha we had the same thing! Mum was always complaining about the phone being in use and I used to have to put the duvet over the pc to hide the modem calling, the AT commands to turn off the speaker never worked. Eventually that company released the pay once never again CD that put an add at the top of the screen. That was happy days for awhile until they they went bust.
- johnnymorgan 3y agoAbsolute legend, it was a different time during that era. I'd bet dollars to donuts the tech that fixed it knew what you were doing and let it slide unless you came back and broke the lock to do it again. Or you got lucky and he though someone on their side made the mistake :) Good times!
- Fatnino 3y agoWhen I was a kid we moved from one condo to a different one in the same building. (major improvement in landlord) Instead of going a couple weeks without a phone line, my dad went to the phone box and rerouted our old condo's line to the new one. Some weeks later when the old condo had a new tenant move in a tech came to our door to ask wtf was going on. He was like "the people who used to live there have been unknowingly paying for your phone service. You're stealing" Yeah, they (we) don't mind, lol.