Stories: How I Discovered H/P

So when did you first discover the wonderful world of phreaking? What made you decide, “This is the life for me, I will dedicate my life to phones and computers.” Here’s a place to share your story with everyone. If you have a story to send, please do. All I ask is that it’s a true story.

For me it was in sixth grade at lunch time with darkkstar. He was going on and on about this “chrome box” he’d heard about and how it could change the traffic lights. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Then my mom got moved to a team at the bank she worked at who fought against hackers/phreaks. Her job was to compile a big dictionary about
h/p/v/c/etc. One day i was looking on with her as she went to this site called “Phone Losers of America.” …Fast forward to May 1999, darkkstar and i got really into prank calling people and our favorite website was www.franksworld.com/pranks. We read everything on that page, including the BIG list which led to www.phonelosers.org. We went there and to my surprise it was the same site I had seen three years ago! that evening, i started up my website which is still running to this day, kinda makes you feel fuzzy huh? -pezwarped15

Hmm…let’s see. My first experience with the computer ‘underground’ must have been four or
five years ago. I was calling up BBSes with my 2400 baud modem, and one day I stumbled upon “The School Stopper’s Textbook.” At that time, I was fairly young and innocent, and thought most of the ideas in the textfile insanely amusing. For some reason, I think I found it on a BBS located in Miller Place (or had Miller Place in the name), on Long Island. (RTF or anybody else who knows of a BBS of such name, please tell me.) Right around this time, my elder brother of four years must have found one or more BBSes dealing with the underground, as he had knowledge of these “boxes.” Each “box” had a different color as the name. I distinctly remember sitting in our 1/2 finished basement one afternoon, thinking of every color my young mind could muster. With a muffled giggle, I inquired as to the existence of a “urine” box, and I was amazed at its existince. He would tell me what each “box” did, and how it worked. After this, I never learned more about the underground hobby known as phreaking.

Fast-forward to 1999. It’s May. I’m burning CDs for those who can assemble the MP3 files they want on the disc, and give them to me on ZIP disk/AIM file transfer, for a modest fee, of course. I notice that somebody’s got a serious Jerky Boys fetish. Upon listening to the completed disc (for quality control purposes only), I crack up. Well now, the smart person I am tells me to go search the internet. Well now, lookey here. “The BIG list of prank links” (http://www.franksworld/pranks/links.html). I scroll down, and something tells me to click on “The Phone Losers of America: Calls from around the country, reviews, and a hell of a lot of other stuff” And boy, when the PLA site pulls up, I start reading issues. And wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Oh, shit, there it is! That’s what the “boxes” were it’s called “phreaking.” Oh my fucking god fucking shit! I just keep reading untill it’s 2:43 in the morning. I found the PLA site on 5/12/99, and bookmarked it 7 times (in quick succession) at 9:25 PM. After the PLA
site, I just kept discovering new phreaking sites, and am still assembling more and more phreaking knowledge. -blasé, of Long Island, NY

For me it was in sixth grade at lunch time with darkkstar. he was going on and on about this “chrome box” he’d heard about and how it could change the traffic lights. i thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Then my mom got moved to a team at the bank she worked at who fought against hackers/phreaks. her job was to compile a big dictionary about h/p/v/c/etc. One day i was looking on with her as she went to this site called “Phone Losers of America.”

…Fast foreward to May 1999. darkkstar and i got really into prank calling people and our favorite website was www.franksworld.com/pranks. We read everything on that pge, including the BIG list which led to www.phonelosers.org. We went there and to my surprise it was the same site I had seen three years ago! that evening, i started up my website which is still running to this day, kinda makes you feel fuzzy huh?

-by pezwar

It all started back in 1997 or 1996. I was searching on AltaVista
for something and in one of the results I saw something about hacking.
Me being rather bored, I rather jokingly typed in,”How can I be a
hacker?” into the search que and ended up getting a bunch of different
websites. I was in awe. This was like almost a dream for me. I read
everything I could on hacking, anarchy, and phreaking, which I’m
pretty sure ended up alienating me even more from kids my age, since all
I ever wanted to talk about was how the phone system worked and how
to make bombs. (I even got suspended from school because I tried to
show some kid in my class some anarchy stuff on how to make bombs.)
One of the many files that I happened to download was a zipped up
text only version of all the PLA magazines. That was by far my
favorite, not having that sort of intellectual pseudo-talk bullshit that was
so prevalent in the text files that I read. Unfortunately, though,
me being the pussy that !
I am, I never actually did any phreaking. The closest I’ve ever done
is walking to a payphone with the intentions of redboxing a call to
someone, anyone, but that got screwed up. That’s how I was introduced
to H/P. -Kilamani

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