Insane Phreaking Adventures

Got a good “war story” to share? If you have a story to send, please do. All I ask is that it’s a true story.

7/2003 – One day my friend and I were at the local Shop-rite (hanging out) snacking in front. They have four payfones there. We know our areas ring-back number (550-last 4 digits of fone # in brick town NJ). All the rings sounded a bit different. After 15 mins of trying we got them to ring in a certain order that had a beat to it. We played the beat twice. When a unmarked cop car pulls up and the guy yells stop!! He told us if we kept scaring the old ladies, he’d take us in, but he didn’t know if we were breaking the law. We still do it even to this day. The employees think it funnie as hell! I have more stories (some are events yet to happen) and will be sharing them over the course of the year. Phreakblaze, NJ

6/2002 – My friend and I were driving around this office complex. We would go behided all the buildings to look for just things. One night we saw a black phone box on the side of the wall, in the back of the place. Then we started talking about how great it would be to take it and set it up at my house for a phone… After about two months we thought it was time to see if we could, (just to let everyone know, I am really lazy). It looked doable so we ran to Mejier (which is open 24/7 “hell yeah”) we picked up the normal stuff… drill, bits for the drill,a knife, and the greatest thing a bolt cutter, which
we duthed it “jizzabella”. I ran up the steps to the top of the platform and tried to take out the crapy phone. But the way it was in there it wasn’t working…so I grabed the back of the phone, and the piece of plywood it was on and tugged on it untill it broke from the box. That really was loud. So I hurried up and tried to un screw the bolts from the wall inside the box. Well there was like some freak reason that they weren’t coming all the way out. So I grabed the bolt cutters and cut
all of them. Not thinking I didn’t hold on to the box so it fell crashing onto the metal platform. I grab all the tools and throw them into my bookbag and got the box. I throw the bag and box into the back of the car and took off. It’s been about two months now and they just put up another one. -SageFrost

4/2002 – Me and my friend had a little setup to raid an Ameritech truck. There is an Ameritech building a quarter of a mile from our houses and we went with 2 walkie talkies, a backpack and our bikes. Since bikes would be easier to ride up than a car. We then took turns being the lookout watching both streets for cars and for anyone exiting the Ameritech building to run a call. We found one truck unlocked and we went in and looted a linemans handset.. an Ameritech helmet.. a weird wire tool and a circuit board that i don’t recognize. We didnt take a lot becuase we didnt want them to really
notice. Since the helmet looked like its been there forever and there was like 3 handsets. Anyway, in the truck we saw box’s full of electronic boards and I have no clue what they are. When we get a snapshot of the one I took I’ll send it to you. -neon

4/2002 – I was down the street from my house at a neighbors house and I was gonna attach a beige box to make a few calls. Well I went around back their house and I found the telco box. I used my screw driver to open the thing and I was in. I was reaching over to get my wire strippers and I didn’t look at my other hand while I was doing it. I happened to be touching the metal rod on the screw driver and as I turned around it hit one of the exposed part of one of the wires in the box. I noticed a tingle in my fingers and then my whole body felt numb and I fell over. It took me a minute to realize that the reason I had fallen over was that I had been electrocuted. Luckily it was a small shock and I still got to attach the box. I must also add that those people had one of the weirdest telco boxes I have ever seen. Outside it was all normal, but inside it had excess wire hanging off the connections and a big piece of phone wire that had been taken out when a second line had been taken out it was very unkempt. I was so annoyed that I actually trimed the wires off and left a little note in the box telling the next person that opens it to give it a hair cut. -SKAKIDD

4/2002 – Me and my friend were sitting in tech class using these walkie-talkies. And the teacher says “when you talk into them just say ‘testing’ because they’re on the same frequency as the schools.” Well me and my friend exchange glances and we know its time for some fun. We went out in the hall and started saying stuff into them like “poop!” and “i smoke crack” then “mr. (insert principals name here) touched me funny”. We then decided to head back in and lay low.

I look at the Walky-talkies one more time and see some junk on the back. This gives me an idea, i start looking for the frequency so i can use my friends scanner to get on it. I find it and write it down. My friend is not really a phreaker but hes also not unaqauinted with the underground world and he thought this was a sweet idea. So later that week the teachers all had a conference and we got the day off. We drive up and park in the high school parking lot (which is behind our middle school were i go) and pull out the scanner. We get the frequency and start listening, I heard some stuff and we were then
sure we had the right frequency. I then start saying stuff like “we have a situation with Mrs. so and so (my french teacher)… she wears her pants up to her fucking neck!” And things like that. After awhile of listening to them try and sound really professional about handling this, i get an idea about how cool it would be to get over the intercom. So i get the schools number and realize that they have a pbx thats rather easy to hack, they give out the extensions for individual rooms and everything.

So after a number of hours worth of playing around, i had a few extensions that i was pretty confident were the intercoms extention. So the next day i bring my Nokia to school and go to the bathroom. I call it up and upon trying the third number, i heard my self over the intercom. I then proceeded to say things like, “kids this is your principal, i just wanted to say i
strongly encourage the use of drugs. So go buy some speed you fucking cocksuckers.” Their office doesnt have speakers in it so they couldnt hear me and it took awhile before the police came in and actually searched for me. By that time i was back in the room. I was only in the bathroom for like 3 minutes so the teachers wouldnt recognize, but i went out several times in between classes and during class. This was great fun, and i was never busted for it! -mastubox, age 14

12/2001 – I was at school, boxed a call, got a live op, hung up walked to try another fone. As I was walking down the street, I saw an unmarked police car, patrol car, and a verison van pull into the school lot. I didnt try any other fones in that area that day. but it really scared my friend. ~Jared~

11/2000 – Me and my friend for sometime have been trying to learn how to steal a payfone online. we checked numerous manuals and a ton of websites, but nothing really came of it. So then one night we snuck out at around 2 am and then we walked to the nearest payfone. this was a SNET fone. So then we really didnt know the fuck we were doing since all of the manuals that we ever read were all shit. so then we just said to ourselves fuck it lets just find out on our own how to steal. and so then we did. we just took a big ass rock and then smashed it with the payfone. at first it didnt really work, i have too admit. but then after the 20th fatal blow it did work and with one clean swoop, BAM! the payfone went to the ground HARD! Man the sound was loud! when we saw it fall on the fucking ground, man that was a fucking rush! i was so happy and the money that we come out of it was even better.

So then we thought well since that we have the payfone in our possession we were going to take a duffle bag and put it in there. But then all of a sudden a nearby house’s lights turned on and someone walked out on their front porch stoop and stood there smoking a cigarrette. he knew what was going on, at least he knew that he heard a lot noise. a loud noise that
shouldn’t be happening at 3 am. So then since it was dark he couldnt see us. So then he went back inside. And then after waiting for like 5 minutes in the bushes hoping that no one was there we took the payfone and stuffed it in the duffle bag. we tried to carry it but it was kinda heavy. then we see a cop come by. we thought oh shit so then we ran with the payfone and the cop saw us. he got out of his car and tried to run after us but the he was kinda a fat ass and we were like 600 feet away from him. by he was still trying to catch us. so then we ran into the woods, which then led to a hill and we go sliding down the hill into the woods. the cop doesnt even try to come after us. and then we were safe. and then that was that. we did it.

TBSiCKO – Orange, CT

One night about a month ago me and 2 of my friends were out and about, just driving around mindlessly without anything to do. We we’ve been in the scene since about 95 (not a long time compared to you old schoolers) but we’ve been around the block and have done just about everything (even build a computer inside a pizza box, 2600 loved that one). But I digress, we pulled into the parking lot of a place that’s name I will not reveal, but it’s around Albany, NY (it’s a dock). Well we’re just chilln there nothing to do we’re munching of some crap we picked up. And we’re talking about funny shit we’d like to do to payfons. Well, we realized it’s all been done. Except one thing…

We drove as fast as we could to the nearest wallmart. Went right to the Hardware section. We picked up a shit load of tools because we left the ones we usually carry with us home that night. Socket wrenches, hammer, screw drivers… But nothing we bought was quite as useful as the 3 foot red crowbar. We quickly sped back to the dock. There she was. An original Bell Atlantic payfon, not that ver00z0n crap. Even at 2 am, it stood there proud and emanating a silvery glow in the darkest of dark nights. We quickly went to work. We had to be very quiet. First we tried to unbolt the top to separate the actual “box” from the housing. That didn’t work. With further inspection I told the guys that there was only one way we were stealing that payfon. And that was if we took the whole damn thing, base and all.

We quickly went to work on base at the ground level. There is a metal cover that is divided into two sheets. We simple used the crowbar to pull it up from the ground, and ripped the rest of it away with our bare hands. After that we were left with only the bolts in the ground to contend with. Ahhhh yes a shining moment in Wal*Mart history, they were open 24/7 so we were able to go and get a socket set. We tried about 3 sockets, only to find that none of them fit. We started to give up. We stopped hacking at the fon for a few a have a smoke break. The trunk of the car was open because we were getting our tools and such from it, it was a mess, but I sat in it. My hand slid across something long and cold. I grabbed hold oh it and brought it up from the mess. This was our answer. We called it, Tire Iron. Yes only though useful for repairing flat ties and killing people the ha! The rusted bar had a new purpose in life, stealing payfons.

We went back to work, shaking frantically. It didn’t seem to fit at first, we had to remove dirt and grime from the head. In the end, it fit perfectly. We removed 4 bolts and were left with a payfon that could be stolen (we had to just cut the telephone line under the base too, just used wire cutters). “Hurry up guys”, was all that I could whisper, as my friends that were a little bit stronger than me lifted the payfon and tried to fit it in the back seat. 2 door GrandAM, lol that wasn’t happening, so I said, let’s put the thing in the trunk. And so we did, it stuck out about 6 inches too long and we had nothing to tie the trunk with. One of my friends sacrificed his shoe lace, and it was done. We had removed and concealed a Bell Atlantic payfon and we on our way home to glory.

This wasn’t the end. The next morning the guys came over. We drove down to K-Mart. We had BIG plans. about 15mins and $20 later we were back home with the fon in the back yard. We went to work, had to wash it first, we used 80% alcohol we just bought. Then we used Bondo to fill in the little air-holes in the shape of a fon receiver on the sides, then quickly sanded it down. We bagged the “box” inside and taped it up really good. Then we went to work with… spraypaint. We used leaves from trees and such to create a camo-ish look to it. And with that we were done. The fon sits proud in the corner of my room now rigged up to my house fon line so I can make and receive calls.

My friend had just made his first red box so i called him after school to tell him how to use it,when i picked up the phone, someone else was having a conversation, i could hear them but they couldn’t hear me, at first i thought that my sister found some of my preaking stuff and figured out how to use it. it turned out the phone comany just screwed
up and i got about a week of eavesdroping fun -Mike Orlando, Florida

I am an older phreak, I was busted by AT&T Corporate Security and SWBell and United States Secret Service. I spent some
time in a group home ( I was 16) they charged me with 11 felonies 9 of which were federal.. And the judge didn’t let them hit me with it. I downed a county in the SWBell area and wreaked havoc on thier 911 (Which they still can’t figure out how..) They said if someone had been hurt or died they would bring me up on whatever they could.. But no one did. The 911 thing is very easy and they still can’t trace my calls and I can call them from anywhere and can still even call them collect. Idoits. Today there are Red Box counter-measures. Of which I have found across the US Most pay phones simply mute the mouth piece until the call is made and connected.. Other ways exist. They are dying just like the blue-boxes did when ESS was implemented. I loved my red-box dearly. The SS stripped my house apart looking for shit like that, but I had been leaving my equipment away from my home since SWBT slammed me. I miss the old days, only few things exist from then. And I can never work for AT&T or SWBT or General Dynamics or Worldcom (Yuck!).. Since MCI is gone they are included.
-Telemann Mediatrix

One nite I was at my usual payphone with my usual red box and I dialed my long distance call and then the Operator came on and asked the usual and I did the usual and about 5 mins into the call the operator said my call has been traced and I went walking around a little bit then about 5 mins later 2 cops show up at the payphone and started looking around and I was walking by and they told me to stop i was like OH SHIT and they just asked me a couple of questions like Did you see anyone using this pay phone and i said no and that was about it.. Ive never been back to that phone since :). -Ixilel

I would like to tell you about my journey into becoming a phreak. It all started when me and my friend were trying to “hack” various things at our mall a few years ago. We tried everything from vending machines to gumball machines, the only thing we got to work was a few tones we burnt onto a cd to make free payfone calls. I thought that was pretty fucking
cool but my friend wasnt too interested. I later then discovered phonleosers.org and read every page thoroughly. The second I found out I could create those tones with out a large annoying CD player I called radio shack and bought the last
2 tone dialers for 5 bucks each, I then ordered the 2 crystals from PLA.

I then learned various things about phreaking. I even later created my own things, this is irrellevant to fones but I hacked a local arcade and can now play any games for free, now get into the movie theator for free and various other little things that make my time at the mall fun. Then I decided to go to the ameritech building down my street and scope that out, they had some tight security but I did some dumpster diving and some social engineering and got a simple tour. It was pretty damn cool looking directly at all of the switches and watching them work as people called. I later built a beige box and started beiging around my neighborhood. The only spot I found that I could beige box without and problems with people noticing me is behind this little church. Im not sure if it is a good idea to beige box off a church but I figured I am probably going to hell anyway (if you believe in that sort of thing).

I later customized my red box by rebuilding the on\off switch to turn the crystal on\off. So I have dtmf and red tones. Then later on someone stole my redbox, I got extremely pissed. Me and another friend decided to get it back so we broke into his house and stole it back. While later using your revenge article and gave him hell. I also customized a box made with photocells and a led so when his first line is called it flashes the led and hits the photocells and then conferences the 2 lines so I have access to his second line. So for about 2 days I was making free long distance\900 calls on the kid’s line until they canceled their phone line and got a new one. After they got the new line it would not work and I am assuming that the bell dude confiscated my precious lil box.

During the school year I got suspended twice, once for stealing my teachers aol password and messing with her and her family (dont hate me, this teacher was a real bitch), and once for taking out my schools phone lines. Heh, I got in a shit load of trouble for the phone lines, my mom ask me “Now what did you learn from all this?” and I replied “Never tell your
friends anything”. Its the truth too, I learned that people like to brag about everything and that will never get you anywhere except a juvenial prison. -NEON64

Me and some freind were at the local mall. So we went across the street to buy so stuph at the comic book store. So on the way in I stopped and red boxed a fone after i played the tones i made my call. The fone rang normal then suddenly click. Then a recording came on and welcomed me to verison. This was new. Next the fone switch then and a couple of times. I really did not care cause this had happened before to me. So and went to the store. On the way out of the mall a large yellow hummer with flashing lights and some verison signs pulled up to the door where we had just walked out. After this me and my freinds took off running, havent been there since. -NateDogg

I live in Cali, but i often travel up to Washington State to visit my number one juggalo homie (also my cousin) Kraze Kiddington. The first time i went up there, he introduced me to the concept of phone phreaking. On one of our early phreaking expeditions, we climbed onto the roof of one of the big grocery store shopping plazas, and discovered an open hatch that led into a dark room…so we went in. It was the fxckin security system control room, and it also had all of the telephone lines to each of the stores in the plaza. So now we could monitor the security status (to make sure that they weren’t on to us) while we were phreaking the phone lines. We made a bunch of international calls, and threatning calls to the father of some slutty little bitches house. He got all pissed of and started cussing us out and threatened that he was going to have the call traced, we just laughed at him. That is one of the best phreaking places we have ever come across. We often use this room to make long distance calls and threatning or harrassing phone calls to people we don’t like. I’m sure some of the stores have seen some unexplainable phone calls on their bills, but nothing has been done to lock up the hatch, or keep us out. Although, most of the time we phreak the payphones line from inside this room, that way nobody will notice. -V_Magante

I was real bored one day and was out boxing just to box. Well anyway,we had been boxing on the same op ,off and on,for about an hour w/o any hitches.(Its a pretty f**king good box) Well all of a sudden the stupid bitch comes out of no where and says “Excuse me sir,but you need to use real money and not a recording.” You know the usual speach. But the thing that really pissed me off was the fact that she waited till I was about 5 min into my conversation to tell this along with the fact that she had been “tracing my call”. Well about 20 min later when the “cops” arrived we were long gone. But we were only across the street and as soon as the SWB rent-a-pigs showed we called the pay phone and harased them until they got pissed and hung up. After that we called the op and bitched her out too. Its not that big a deal but at the time it was funny as hell! -Beavis/beav66613

While playing around with my cordless phone a few years ago, I found out that if you short out the charging terminals on the base with something metal(duh-I used a big spoon) it cuts off the phone. I did this mainly to piss of my sister, but one time I did it and we heard a conversation. We could press the channel button and-voila- a new convo. Not all the channels had someone on them, but does your TV have every channel? It’s a great form of entertainment. -L0de, 770, Georgia

I was exploring my apartment complex when I found several rooms conviently marked “phone.” And prior to my perusal, I saw telco workers with their nicely identifiable orange handsets playing in there. So of course I took it upon myself to enter one such room (by carding the latch) and lo and behold the com hub for my section of the complex. I immediately began grounding all the connections. For several days I went in there. PacBell trucks skimmed around the area searching for me. Thats to say that they were spending too much time in the phone room and whoever was pulling this is gonna get the telco pole in the arse. So I layed low for 2 weeks. I then beige boxed it. I got a good pair but DOH!, I forgot to make stealth augumentations to it.

I spliced into a line while two senior citizens were talkin about wine or something and i said “Yeah, i like gettin shit faced offa that too!” And then they paused. It was like a minute of silence. And then they said “Whos there?” I said “Do you guys hafta shit in bags?” or something like that. Of course I proceeded to torture these people until they hung up. The dumbass old fuck hung up and picked up again. I said “Hello fuckhole!”. And this process ensued for like another hour until he threatened to cut my throat. Try this: its all in good phun! -Giygas

Well, me and my friend were at this main fone box… (I mean this box has like half of the town’s fone wires in it!) Anyways, we kept on going to it and cutting a whole bunch of the wires in there for like a month or two. In the middle of the month, they were so stupid, that they left 2 spools of 400 feet of fone wire! so we took the wire and cut the wires. heh. then we came back a couple weeks later and they locked it. heh. -Handset, NY

Well, I have a whole bunch of fone stories, hmmm, which one to tell? Okay, not too long ago UsWest implemented their new pay phone filters, that when +130v is put through the line, activates a filter in the fortress which blocks red tones from the handset. Well, to get around this, i would dial my call with a 0 instead of a 1, and get an operator (tsps). After telling the operator that this phone seems to be broken, and i couldn’t dial, an that it was the only phone around, she’d ask me if i wanted to pay with coins, and i’d say yes. I’d jiggle my keys like i’ was fumbling with change, and red box my way to wherever i was calling,,, mostly. One time this didn’t work, and the operator told me “Sir, you’ll have to stop using your red box, because this phone does not recognize red box tones”.

Well, i told her that i was putting money in and that this phone must be broken, and then i asked her what a red box is, and she replied “a red box is a device to make the sound of a quarter”. My next querstion was “Wow, Where can I buy one? I can make free calls? Can i order one from you?” Needless to say she was shocked at my questions, and after apologizing to me, let me red box my call. -ToO sIcKs ZeRo zErO

A few years ago me and a guy from werk were redboxing at a IGA Payphone. It was at like 10 PM so the store was closed. We were on the phone like 2 hours just calling EVERYONE. We made atleast 100 dollars in calls just that night… Anyways, we were in a good prank call to a NewYork chinese resturant, it was really kicking ass cuz the owner was getting really pissed off cuz it was like midnight and that was his house/business, He started to cuss at us really fast and I heard a bunch of clicking sounds and 3 or 4 beeps, really quick and high pitched…. The phone was dead, I hung up, the phone starts to ring! An operator is on the other line!!! She says, this line is being check for trouble. I replied, I was talking miss! then she starts talking about federal offenses with phone deciveing devices and thats when we got the fuck outta there! -Verpine

first of all it is 1800 KILLGOD so no one is confused, secondly one day I was at a cocot and found it was so crappy that it took MF tones directly no need to dial a 1800 number. so I dialed the repair place and told them that the phone was spitting out coins, then I krazyglued 6 fake quarters to the ground and left, later I went back and this fat ass repair man with his crack showing was trying to crowbar the coins. so now whenever I can I do a similar thing, btw. if you ever go to disneyland the magic store sells these double headed quarters made of plastic, but they look real, in packs of 20 for $2.39, or did when I went there, always use krazy or super glue, elmers doesn’t cut it. it is really more of a prank I know but fuck it is fun to watch. btw, try placing a nickel on top of a ninevolt battery when you use a phone with a line, it shocks the hell out of them, and I am away getting high on life and other injectible cereals, so like cheerios. -Gryfter, Morgan Hill, CA

Let just say it not a good idea to red box from a school, get the op, sing a song “we don’t like paying for phone calls” and then tell all your friends. Later I found out That me and my friend had about stole about $55,000 from telco. found out cause cops where looking around. -SGTpepper

I had just got done with this convo with this dude and am hanging up when I hear touch tones…him dialing out. I hesitated… Can you guess what I did? Well, I say “Hello?” into the phone in a real gruff voice like someone had answered the phone. “Uh..is there?” he asks. “Yeah, wait.” I say in the gruff voice. Well…during this convo I tried and tried to get him to come over to her house. I tried pleading, begging and then…used HER feminine wyles (if you know what I mean). After a while, I said fuck it and decided this guy must be gay or something (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and tell him who I REALLY was. Needless to say, he was pretty pissed. But I thought it was pretty damn funny. -Jennifer Martino, Bloomingdale, IL

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