PLA Issue #16: Deaf Fones, Phone Books and Phone Bills

Written by Zak (aka el_jefe) on January 15, 1995

Roy! Welcome to PLA file #16. This file is about TDD machines. Those cute
little keyboards and acoustic hookups that you find on payphones. TDD devices
can provide hours of fun for a bored phreak, or just someone who has nothing
better to do with his life, like me. TDD’s are so deaf people can pay
outrageous phone bills just like the rest of us.

Say you are walking through the airport on the way back from HoHoCon and see
one of these cool things. Flip the power switch next to the screen, put the
receiver on the rubber circles. Dial the relay number for whatever state you’re
in, and the operator will begin typing to you. Ask her to call somebody for
you. It has to be in that area code, and you have to pay with
a calling card or third number billing or another fraudulent method if you’re
going to call long distance.

So, you found a TDD, and the operator called your friend Bobby. If he doesn’t
know about the relay service, she will explain it to him. Then, she will say
WHATEVER you type on the keyboard, no matter how silly, obscene or illegal,
she must repeat what you tell her to. We have had them talk about such things
as cocaine deals, blowing up commuter flights, and even “Oh baby, my pussy is
so wet.”

As a service to deaf people, TDD’s don’t charge anything for a local call. If
anyone knows where there is a TDD machine in the 618 area code, tell me because
I really want to steal it. Also, most TDD machines don’t have any punctuation
and only type in CAPS so you need special codes to do some things.

Q === a question mark
GA == Means Go ahead
SKSK= Goodbye

Getting a copy of someone’s phone bill

This is an easy and fun way to get revenge on someone. Just call up the Billing
Office (Ameritech: 1-800-244-4444) and get the operator for home accounts. Tell
her you will be out of state around the time your phone bill arrives, and you
want it to be sent to another address. Usually, the operator will be happy to
do this for you, but sometimes you get the operator who seems to think that she
is with undercover Bell Sekurity, and want info like your SS# or want to call
you back at home. If you get one of these types of operators, hang up or
something. You might already have the victims SS#, but most of the time, it
will not be needed.

Now it’s time to choose a place for the bill to be sent to. Some good places
are, his parents house, a friends house, or maybe a P.O. Box that you got in
someone else’s name. Then, you will have his family and friends numbers, and
most of the other people he calls. You can call him up and recite some numbers
off the bill, or how much he owes. One nice thing about this is that this will
probably make him late paying the bill, and he will owe a late charge!

Phone Books

Once again, call up the billing office, and press whatever button gives you
the phone directory ordering line. An operator will ask how she can help you.
Tell her what city, state or country you want a phone book from. She will ask
for a bunch of things like your name, number and address.

Give her whatever name you want the book sent in, someone else’s number, and
a P.O. Box you want the books sent to. The books that you order wil be billed
to whatever number you gave her, so it really doesn’t matter if the address
belongs to the person that gets the bill for them.

Cactus@i1.net to mail Zak. Long live the PLA!

Comments

03/14/06 – denny from new rochelle: i want to call

10/02/05 – turbotundra from underneath the stairs: I used to be an operator for ip-relay.com and had to relay those fucking calls you fuckers made.I haven’t got any problem with playing with the relay system, but when you do, remember to play with the system and not the operator. GA=Go Ahead and must be said/typed after each thing you want to tell the other party, like ‘over’. SK is Stop Keying, means you’re getting ready to hang up. SKSK means you want to hang up right away. Q is used in place of a question mark.No punctuation is used in relay.


08/14/05 – Brady from Seattle: buddy from seattle are you around? I have a question about the IP relays.


07/16/05 – Drew from Mississippi: You don’t need a TDD – Try calling the relay number with a modem and a terminal program. I used old hardware to do this, but it probably still works.


05/19/05 – SaTaNsKiTtY from Hell On Earth: SK means “stop keying” in TDD parlance, and SKSK is a “double stop keying” which means you are finished with your call. The better TDD’s have SK and GA keys so you to not even need to type the codes. Also, most machines do have the period, comma, hyphen, and question mark… usually it types in ALL CAPS, but the higher quality machines use ALL CAPS for one end of the conversation, and lowercase for the other end of a conversation (such as a printing TDD/TTY unit, or one that is “printer ready”


04/19/04 – okie from muskogie: There’s also www.sprintrelay.com


03/13/04 – insanebeetle from california: theres one at relaycall.com


03/06/04 – buddy from seattle, north korea: http://www.ip-relay.com/ has a free deaf relay service, i just tested it, i had homosexual gay phonesex with my friend jeff in california, a chick relayed everything i typed including “Oh jeff, i want your rock hard throbbing 12 inch man pole to shoot a load up my rectum”


03/06/04 – buddy from seattle, north korea: awhile ago someone called me with a deaf relay service that is on the internet, she told me the url but she pissed me off awhile later and i forgot all about it until five minutes ago, does anyone know what the url for the relay service is?


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One thought on “PLA Issue #16: Deaf Fones, Phone Books and Phone Bills

  • October 21, 2018 at 8:52 am
    Permalink

    There’s a new angle on this that you guys maybe never thought of. Back in ’03, I was on the streets and usually ate once a day — on a good day. Well, I remembered this very article and came up with an idea: I used the TTY phone down in the library of the local college campus to call up pizza joints and run the “I have a store credit for a pizza” scam. The “store credit for a pizza” scam was already pretty tired by then, but when you add the sympathy layer of the call being from a “deaf kid”, that put it over the top and made it work like a charm again.

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