How Telephone Phreaking Worked

[@PuyoPuyoMan]

So I mentioned this video to my father: "I'm watching a video on telephone phreaking", and his first question was: "did he mention a guy named Captain Crunch? I had math with him" Small world huh

[@tanglelover]

Whoz, that's so cool!

[@andrive]

Cool

[@NithProYT]

wow what a cowincedence

[@Nolroa]

Wow.

[@faokie]

@@tanglelover No, Woz was a different guy

[@truthsmiles]

“None of the questions were audible” Pro-tip for anyone taking questions from an audience: Repeat the question. Not just for recordings but for the rest of the audience who couldn’t hear it.

[@downscale]

Excellent Tip indeed.

[@MrGoatflakes]

Yes, but better to have some one walk around with a mic and hand it to person that asks the question. Can't believe this isn't the norm in recorded lectures...

[@truthsmiles]

MrGoatflakes - I respectfully disagree. When the speaker repeats the question the audience gets to hear it in the same voice they’re used to, and it also serves as a “check” to make sure the speaker understood the question.

[@MrGoatflakes]

@@truthsmiles true

[@rmbassett58]

This is also a Pro-Tip for college teachers. When the old foreign lady or the super quiet kid asks a question, nobody in the back half can hear whats going on

[@DarrellGrainger]

One thing he didn't mention was calling someone right back. I found out if you prank call the operator and hang up, they can ring you right back. I figured out how that worked. One day, a female friend from high school had some creep calling her and breathing heavy. She didn't know what to do and told me at school. One day we are at her place and the creep called. I wrote to her to keep him on the line for a few seconds. I then picked up an extension and in a deep voice said, "Thank you miss. We have traced the call and know where he is." The guy hung up. I used the tone to call right back. I told the guy we were the police, we had traced the call, knew where he was and would be sending a squad car around shortly. He was panicking and crying. We told him if he was truly sorry and never did it again, we'd let him off this time. He never called back. haha.

[@zyad48]

Incredible

[@MLife1000]

Brilliant 👏

[@faenethlorhalien]

Epic if true. Amazing.

[@MrWolfSnack]

*69 - You dial that and it redials the last number that called you even when you do not know that number.

[@rchaykovskiy]

@@MrWolfSnack nice

[@BennoWitter]

I discovered a method for certain payphones in Germany in the 90's, where you would press the hook down about halfway. The line would reset and you'd get a dial tone, but the keypad was blocked because the phone thought you'd hung up. The microphone, however, stayed open and you could dial any number using a DTMF generator like the ones that came with answering machines.

[@mixalisstathis274]

This was exactly where my phonenumber-dialtone-watch came into play...

[@rtwice93555]

Interesting stuff. I could have used this when I was younger. When I met my girlfriend in 1979 she lived in Santa Ana, California and I lived in the high desert. I was 14 at the time and had a job throwing news papers which meant I always had a pocket full of quarters. I remember walking to the gas station about a mile away to use their pay phone to call my new love. For 80 cents we could talk for 10 minutes. It never seemed long enough to me. Today it blows my mind to see 14 year olds carrying $400 smartphones and the parents paying a monthly service for those kids. You realize what I could have done with that kind of money when I was 14? By the way, 40 years later, the girl that cost me 80 cents a night to talk to is now my wife of 36 years.

[@ThatCrazyGamerz]

Your Pocket Mechanic amazing

[@RandyMarsh-uc6sw]

Your story made me happy thank you..

[@Jojje94]

What a nice wholesome story. Thanks for sharing

[@amb3cog]

You made me smile twice. First with the $400 phone. Lol I've seen kids with $1000 phones, and more. I've also seen many a college kid driving a $40,000 plus vehicle. Talking Audi's, and such. And they're usually kind of beaten looking. Dents, and such. Because they didn't pay for it, I'll assume. People seem to lose their mind when it comes to their children sometimes. I'm very happy my Father made me buy my own first car, very happy. He taught me something no amount of money could buy. Second was your story. Very, very cool story. And I'm thinking it's probably a good thing you had to actually pay for those calls. Probably helped build your character, and made your future wife more appreciative of you, and those calls. Either way. Sure glad to hear it all worked out for you two. God Bless you both.

[@CHAOSMOVEMENT]

I know how you feel. I used to use phone cards at the pay phone, until I was about 14 and read the cookbook. Build the red box and never paid for a call again lol.

[@teilani_ayures]

Minor public speaking tip I learned in a class: During Q&A , try to remember to repeat the question so the rest of the audience can hear it through the mic. It solves the problem you had for the video as well as a bonus!

[@roxcyn]

Good tip, thanks for sharing.

[@TravisTev]

Yeah, I always appreciate it when they do that. I hate it when the questions are inaudible and they don't repeat it, which means you have no idea what they're answering.

[@Michael-zj3cn]

Also it's good to scream as loud as possible if not using the mic

[@adog3129]

i wish he had just left the questions in and let me figure out what they asked through context

[@LittleDancerByGrace]

This also helps anybody in the audience across the room from the 'question asker' to know what the question was...

[@awizardalso]

Back in the late 60's, I had a cassette recorder microphone on the speaker end of the handset. I had a friend call me from a pay phone and drop some coins in the phone and I recorded the bell dings. I made another recording duplicating many quarter dings. I would make long distance calls from a pay phone, and when the operator dropped in and said to drop in more money to keep the call going, I just played the recording for the quarter dings. It worked!

[@notyetskeletal4809]

Wow. Now I can't walk down the road without being on camera. Thanks. Oh well we'll all milk the loopholes until dystopia sets in. Thanks for yer story!

[@jimm1387]

I was able to do something similar in the late 90's with a RadioShack mini-cassette recorder. I miss that era of computing.

[@bobomob111]

@@notyetskeletal4809 Make a necklace and glasses that emit IR light to blind the cameras. It doesn't take much to make your head a white glow. There are still loopholes today.

[@damienhartley7639]

@@jimm1387 I was not born yet back then but I phreak the neighbors wifi sometimes and I consider it protecting them from the hackers.

[@fieldsobrietytest4462]

@@bobomob111 Considering that most modern cameras have an IR filter, that likely wouldn't work.

[@eldiablo3794]

I remember in the 1995 movie Hackers starring Angelina Jolie, each hacker had their own specialty hack that they were really good at. The character Ramon Sanchez specialty was payphone phreaking. He carried around a tape recorder with dial tones playing on it and would put it up to the payphone receiver to call other hackers.

[@terryjones9784]

Remember where I put that thing that time?

[@petervollan9286]

Right, red boxing a pay phone is shown, although of course the tones in the movie are not the correct ones.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

"Local long distance" being expensive was a thing most places. Here in Oregon back when I was growing up, the whole state was area code 503. Yet Portland had this strange hodge-podge of local vs. local-long distance vs long-long distance. From within the City of Portland, calling some of the suburbs you had to dial 1-503, while other suburbs you didn't. Anything more than about 30 miles away was always long-long distance, though (so the state capital, Salem.) But _from_ the suburbs to the City proper was *NOT* long distance. So my cousin could call me and it was a local call, but if I called him, it was long distance. And calling him in the suburbs was more expensive than calling my grandmother in Seattle. It was a very strange situation, because some suburbs were "cheap long distance" while others were more expensive. It all depended on how that line was connected to my local exchange. In the case of the one cousin, while he had a 503 area code, and he was *FAR* closer to Portland than to any other major city, it turned out that his trunk line went through Boise, Idaho! That was multiple trunk line connections, so it was expensive. Portland to Salem was slightly cheaper, and Portland to Seattle was cheaper still - because there were more trunk lines connecting Portland to Seattle as the two major cities in this part of the country. My dad worked for "the phone company" through its many iterations over the years - working in only two buildings his entire career, never having to "get re-hired," yet his business cards had five different company names on them over the years - AT&T, Pacific Northwest Bell, US West Communications, Qwest, and finally CenturyLink right before he retired. I learned a lot about POTS through him. One fun side effect is that our house had three telephone lines when I was in high school - connected to three different local exchanges! (different prefixes,) because each time a new line was added, a new local exchange had been built closer than the prior ones, but they never removed the old lines. So when DSL came out, my dad got to try all three phone lines to see which one had the best speed. He even managed to choose his line number (the last four,) so he chose to have it match his address (a house my parents still live in, still with the same phone number.) That confused people quite often. "What's your address?" "4321 Main St." "What's your phone number?" "555-4321" "... Wait, is your address 1234 or is your phone number?" "Yes."

[@NozomuYume]

It's because after the AT&T breakup in 1982, the ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) had a monopoly over calls within the LATA (local access and transport area), but not over "long distance" calls between LATAs. Inside your LATA, the local carrier could decide what was a free call and what was a toll call with complete impunity, and there was no competition for pricing for the toll calls. The "ILEC" term didn't even exist at the time, it was only introduced when local phone service competition was introduced in 1996. That's when the model started to break down, and eventually pretty much all US calls became toll-free except for Granny's ILEC home phone that she kept because she didn't know any other way to use a phone.

[@DerekLippold]

Exactly. That happened when I was a kid too. My dad worked AT&T over a couple iterations to Lucent.

[@PhoneLosersofAmerica]

A lot of outlying areas around Portland were serviced by GTE instead of U.S. West, so it cost a little extra to call into a different company. Salem and Seattle were both U.S. West. I used to red box from Portland in the 90's and noticed the differences in how much I stole from the various areas.

[@misterkite]

Yeah, San Diego had local long distance too. I had a list of prefixes that were free to call and would never dial a BBS that wasn't on that prefix list.

[@_windows_software_wizard_2136]

Anonymous Freak You must of had to charge your phone three times while writing this comment story..respect

[@Adamyup32]

I like how david smirks after each secret knowing damn well he indulged in all of that " illegal " activity lol.

[@RedwoodRhiadra]

Oh, he clearly admits it even without the smirk; he says "we" did this, etc.

[@sporkeh90]

didnt we all xD

[@chrishatcher4545]

Only if you were over 18.

[@andrive]

Lol

[@RedwoodRhiadra]

I didn't, but even though I'm about the same age, my family couldn't afford a computer until I was a junior in high school, and I didn't have one of my own until halfway through college, by which time none of these things worked. So there really wasn't any chance for me to try them.

[@cageybee7221]

black box for file transfer: phone company: "this phone has been ringing for an extremely long time....."

[@SAV175]

Hello Stalin.))

[@danielpierz]

Lol

[@CyBeRTRoNFLuX]

hahahahaha

[@Krmpfpks]

To add another story: we did this in Germany too, with tons of different tricks. Funniest one was when one of us who could speak American English called MCI and yelled at them why they changed the calling card test number pretending he keeps testing lines in Germany and they don’t work. The other side replied it’s still 16 times 6 and one seven. This number worked for almost a year for us and we were abusing it heavily. Like in having 20 hour conference calls on those expensive party chat lines.

[@occamraiser]

so stealing thousands...... still proud of that?

[@Mace907]

@@occamraiser oh no, whole thousands of dollars from Ma Bell 30 years ago

[@HA05GER]

​@@occamraiser stealing thousands, have a day off will ya. Just because the calls cost doesn't mean the company lost money it'll be pence the cost of the electricity that's about it.

[@markoorlando4532]

4:07 hearing david say pornographic anime magazine makes me laugh so hard

[@guiox]

"It's called Hentai, and it's art" - Stanley

[@TheLegoman332]

"It's called hentai, and it's art"

[@glori0usoce]

"it's called hentai, and it's art." -Stanley Hudson

[@KoopaKid660]

I need boobies to live

[@Fantasticxbox]

I can't wait for the future YTP using it.

[@mushroomsamba82]

"How Telephone Phreaking Worked" or "How David Spent His Youth Ripping Off the Phone Company" 😅

[@ArchLinuxTux]

But that's what we had for entertainment

[@chrishatcher4545]

He's correct in that It would cost me 50 cents a minute to talk to my Grandmother 8 miles from me Orange County to Los Angeles County vs. me calling 300 miles away to Kingman Arizona. I think it's called fair game back then ;-)

[@QuantumMech_88]

He's really young compared to the old farts who are still around .

[@TimWochomurka]

Problem?

[@yafilmDOTcom]

@Taren Capel Yup you read my mind. As I was watching this video where he admits to having done this, for a second the idea of him getting into trouble got there but then instantly I through of the statute of limitations (which I think for this "offense" should be 5 years if not 10 years max) has long expired so it didn't matter anymore.

[@fitnesswithsteve]

2019: I have unlimited long distance and I don’t call anyone

[@sirkastic]

Cool story bro

[@respt46]

Haha, what a story mark

[@Omar-em7rl]

i liked the part where he said " I have unlimited long distance and I don’t call anyone"

[@DuoDynamo]

@CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG He's likely referring to the fact that, since nobody in the internet can be belived 100% due to anonimity, it's easier to pass off everything that you read on the internet as false.

[@FlintG]

Yeah who makes phone calls anymore? Only reason I still do is to my relatives lol.

[@mdoyle1981]

In the early days of phreaking there was a blind kid with perfect pitch and he could whistle his own tones perfectly without using any boxes.

[@Axel230]

A few comments up some guy said he could sing his home phone number ... Could this be the legendary blind kid with perfect pitch?

[@arthurkurtz2448]

There were newspaper accounts (about the blind young man who could perfectly mimic these tones) where he was interviewed and his photograph appeared. He was a bit of a celebrity in the day.

[@JenXOfficialEDM]

Oh man, I did that also. I called a 1-800 number for the Kool-Aid Wacky Warehouse and hummed tunes to tell the system my ZIP code. Now the Wacky Warehouse is nothing more than an abandoned factory in Kankakee, Illinois. The perfect pitch talent has helped me as a musician.

[@pinomarino8917]

You’re referring to Joe “Joybubbles” Engressia.

[@filter4now]

@@pinomarino8917 Joybubbles was the first hacker so to speak? I heard rumors that he actually did some time but had quite a few friends who appreciated his skills (true, I don't know)

[@Calispeedboi]

This was bomb. Would watch a series about old school hacking if you ever made one

[@scaper8]

Oh absolutely. I would completely love that two hour breakdown of all the phreak boxes for example. Old-school hacking is utterly fascinating.

[@Schattiz]

In -91 when I was at summer camp, one of my american friends (I'm Swedish) used a whistle to make long distance calls. Never knew how it worked or how he figured it out. But I was very impressed atm. :) Thanks David for clearing this up!

[@andrive]

This is cool

[@-_IT_-]

91? I doubt he was using a whistle. That method was being fazed out in the 80's by phone companies.

[@southjerseysound7340]

@@-_IT_- You could fool payphones well into the late 90's in many places. The big cities upgraded first but small towns etc didn't upgrade switchboards until later.

[@TimWochomurka]

@@southjerseysound7340 you could find payphones in Toronto in 2005 that red boxing worked on.

[@Jackpkmn]

@@southjerseysound7340 To this day the original building my small hometown had its manual switch board in still stands and holds the telephone exchange. Including the bricked over windows from when operators used to sit inside with the plugs. It's funny looking at it on google maps today.

[@satan2583]

Computer 1: calls Computer 2 Computer 2: answers phone Computer 1: “:o” Computer 2: “:0” Computer 1: “:)” Computer 1: hangs up.

[@aidenb3069]

Ok

[@KELLY-yv7vp]

this is cute

[@catalinbadalan4463]

(Digital) Love Story.

[@pathevermore3683]

did i just read computer porn?!

[@prakharmishra3000]

@@MrPikachuTheMadman are you trying to get me in trouble??

[@occamsrazor1285]

7:56 Fun fact; Trunk lines continue to exist in networking. Trunks are the connections between switches. They're much more configurable, but we'd have to start discussing vlans to explain why.

[@jacksonjohnson9674]

yup, n types of lines

[@terminator572]

What the heck is a vlan

[@occamsrazor1285]

@@terminator572 Virtual LAN. Switch ports can have a vlan tag assigned to them so that any packets that pass through that port get tagged as being on that vlan, and only ports assigned the same vlan tag can communicate. For example; one might tag all the ports to which a stores registers are connect with the tag "POS" (point-of-sale) and so only other registers can talk to other registers. Anything else (like the computers in the back office used for things like email or excel spreadsheets) can't reach the registers. That would be done as a security measure so if that back office machine gets malware on it, a hacker can't use it to reach the registers and steal credit card data.

[@aleaallee]

You just brought back PTSD vietnam memories from when I had to study networking, vlans and vlsm in my I.T degree.

[@occamsrazor1285]

@@aleaallee Haha. I thought that was the most fun part of the Cisco Network Academy.

[@joekenorer]

When I was a kid I learned about this because I had that Captain Crunch whistle, back then a cheap toy was still a toy, and it was pretty durable so I carried it everywhere. There was a kid in our neighborhood who could sometimes whistle the tone that would cause the dial tone to changeover and we all thought that was cool, but one day he took my Captain Crunch whistle and did just as you described, dialed a toll free number and used the whistle to make it reset. We would stay up entire weekends prank calling random numbers all over the country. I was fascinated, just calling someone a state away was unheard of because of the cost, but we were talking to anyone we wanted to anywhere in the country. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen until I saw a live chatroom. Halcyon years.

[@malcolmdrake6137]

😂 "...kid in his neighborhood." The story grows.

[@praxxor718]

"I was also asked to sign a pornographic anime magazine" Madlasses brought some hentai to sign lmao

[@Valery0p5]

_bad joke incoming_ If the footage was correlated they were probably some madlesbies ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) (Probably not since anyone would be able to identify that girl's identity nowdays with image search etc...)

[@71bw]

@@Valery0p5 I'm not even gonna comment on how big of a fool you just made of yourself saying that.

[@respt46]

I like those too

[@Valery0p5]

@@71bw I'm in another continent so who cares! xD it's not my face the one on the screen

[@kingeternal_ap]

Cosplay is already erotic enough :D

[@Subparanon]

Former telecomm engineer here. The reason for the change had less to do with phreaking and more to do with technology. POTS or "plain old telephone system" uses something called circuit switched data. This means that it literally was connecting different phone lines together, doing translations based on dialed digits to figure out which lines to connect etc. Like those old timey operators plugging cables into a jack. The problem was how do you tell the switching center what 2 lines to connect from the phone? All of the information had to be inline on the same line as the voice call, and so they used tones. This is 'in band signalling' because the controls for the line are on the same line used for talking. Eventually though as things started going digital and later moving from circuit switched networks to packet switched networks (like the internet and tcp/ip) we started using out of band signalling. A digital trunk like like a T1 had 24 time slots, allowing 23 calls (assuming no compression is being used) and 1 control line. So all the signaling was done on a single time slot (the dialed digits etc) and the voice call was on a separate time slot. So it no longer relied upon audio tones on the voice line, because the control was done on a completely different line. Eventually many switching centers went fully packet switched and calls are set up and routed using SS7 over IP like SIP protocol, and switched just like any other network traffic.

[@bluecollargamer7071]

Wow blast from the past. I was a "telecom hobbyist" in the early 90s onward. Kinda lost interest when it went to voip. My favourites were trying to figure out what the test numbers in the 99xx - 9999 suffix.

[@IdeaBoxful]

The marked difference due to voip and digital switching was the improvement in voice quality

[@IdeaBoxful]

Back during the analog days, oh it was horrible due to noise on long distance calls

[@ablationer]

What I'm wondering is what about today's landlines? Say I still have my 20 year old phone plugged into the wall, tones and all, does it just emulate the old system, or do the companies still have legacy systems up just for those?

[@RowanHawkins]

​ @ablationer About 5 years ago I tried to switch-hook dial a number. Either I was wildly out of practice or that didn't work any more, tones still worked then. In the late 90's they proceedureally fixed payphone line identification putting an end to most international calls being accepted for billing on a pay phone. That would have been an inward dialed number to a payphone a/la/matrix. Those and bridge lines were popular for bookies.

[@crosenblum]

Brings back memories of my teenage years, I was no hacker, but I was a bbser, and bbs sysop many times.

[@monkey_thedog2369]

What

[@christrahan2229]

@@monkey_thedog2369 something we did back in the 90s :)

[@truckerdave8465]

Oh man. I discovered BBSes from PrintShop. There was a Brøderbund bbs.

[@erichkohl9317]

Same here. I collected BBS telephone numbers the way some teenagers collected baseball cards.

[@rallokkcaz]

No the 90s you guys are 12. That was early late 70s and the 80s.

[@josephlatona4495]

I used to do this in the mid 90s when I needed to make a Payphone call from high school. I used a pocket voice recorder from radio shack to capture the tones for putting 1 dollar into the Payphone. Played it back and BAM! Free phone call. Lol. Miss those days 😢

[@dons8122]

watched a little to much Hackers didn't you.

[@r6u356une56ney]

Grayboxing. So named because the radio shack recorders were usually gray.

[@worldweeklynewz5818]

Yeah the better technology and cell phones is not near as cool as carrying a recording of quarters being inserted into a payphone. Ewww and don't get me going on the I phone or Droid with all the knowledge in the world at the tip of your finger in your pocket on something smaller than said recorder. Stupid tech!!

[@SteveKasian]

@@dons8122

[@SteveKasian]

@@r6u356une56ney Archer ~~~>

[@jasonknight1085]

I still think it's a historical irony that two phreakers created a computer company that eventually started making telephones.

[@MrWolfSnack]

If you're good at what you do, don't do it for free.

[@annieworroll4373]

Phones they don't let you mess with.

[@hadesmcfadden2982]

depends on what you're good at@@MrWolfSnack

[@DinobosArchiveVolume2]

@@annieworroll4373 based pfp :3

[@AiOinc1]

Telephones which are consistently world renowned for how locked down they are.

[@FamilyGuyBob]

"The only place you'll see darth vader playing the bag pipes while riding a unicycle" Man, they only come out at night. Or in this case, the day.

[@gasmice]

He's called the Unipiper, and he does the Star Wars theme on the bagpipes. When he's outdoors, he also sometimes has the bagpipes shoot flames.

[@jwr2904]

@@gasmice that sounds awesome lol

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

He is a common sight in Portland.

[@handsolo1209]

Portland used to have Roddy Piper, now it has Unipiper......................

[@NuTollaInUrMouth]

I think there's multiple videos of him wearing a Sonic one time Mario another time and also Link costume playing video game movies and TV shows theme at multiple different expo & convention?

[@choosetolivefree]

Ah, the 80's. The age when computer networks were growing, and had no security whatsoever.

[@thewewguy8t88]

yeah pretty much i mean i wont lie it feels like the stone age compared to today lol.

[@ShawnJonesHellion]

an when they tried we could just take their software from them an become the security

[@FIDEL_CASHFLOW_]

Even on into the early 90s. I remember we had Windows 95 or 98 on the home computer and my dad was a computer consultant so he was at least concerned with a tiny bit of safety but still didn't know much in that regard, he was mostly on the business side. Anyways, he set up user profiles for myself and my siblings with no admin privileges and then an account for himself with complete control. If I wanted to install a game I wasn't able to because I lacked admin privileges. One day I was looking around on the login screen and there was a button at the bottom I hadn't really noticed that said "copy profile". This button allowed me to copy my dad's profile into a new profile complete with the admin privileges and then log into it with my own password. Eventually I found out how to log into that profile and then install any game that I wanted onto the desktop for only my regular profile and then I would delete the admin profile afterwards so my dad didn't see it.

[@SH-rs6ow]

We still have that, it's called IoT :p

[@CaseyShontz]

@@FIDEL_CASHFLOW_ wow, that’s pretty creative. It’s sometimes surprising what kids can come up with so they can get around their parents restrictions 😂

[@gabriellanunoffyourbeeswax8367]

I remember having a keychain device that emulated the dial tone. You would put in the numbers and keep it to the horn and it would dial. It would hold up to 8 phone numbers. So as a kid you would not have to remember the number to call your parents or have a paper with you. Eventually I put in the cheat codes for free calling. Like the pay card numbers and I could use it in the payphone when they started using scratchcards. That was late 80s Early 90s in the Netherlands. Great trip down memory lane. Thank you.

[@gantmj]

When I was a kid, we figured out the phone number for the modem that controlled the school's HVAC system by just trying a few numbers surrounding the advertised main school number. No automated war dialing was even necessary.

[@danielhetrick3435]

Did you make the school like super cold or something?

[@rickhowe5082]

@@danielhetrick3435 I'd have cut the A/C in the summer or heat in the winter to get free days off.

[@MrHurricaneFloyd]

Freeze ALL the pipes.

[@blox2542]

What's HVAC

[@Vincent_Sullivan]

@@blox2542 Heating, Ventilating, Air Conditioning.

[@freeculture]

There was another reason for "piracy" in the 80ies. Those of us living in less fortunate countries just did not have access to foreign imports (which included software). So even when you made a tremendous effort to obtain a (foreign) personal computer, you had no where to get software from, only friends. There was no internet. Later a few BBS did pop up we could dial and obtain a few things from, but that was already late 80ies. Even books to learn programming were hard to come by, very frustrating. The telephone system in my country did not use in band signaling like the American, heck it didn't even use tones it was still pulse and you could "fool" a certain type of payphone or phone (physical) lock that would be attached to the rotary dial #1 so you would only receive but not make calls. The pulses could be made by quickly hanging/unhanging rapidly the number of times for each number without bothering with the rotary.

[@xmlthegreat]

That... Actually makes so much sense. Although my country probably had a tone system by the time I was born, I forgot that at one point only pulses controlled the electro mechanical switching equipment in exchanges and the like.

[@alfsmith4936]

Your story reminded me, when I was younger I lived in a shared house. The landlord made us use prepaid cards for the phone. I worked out that if you lifted the receiver and repeatedly tapped the switch to hang up, fast, the card system was bypassed. He went nuts when he got his phonebill and everyone in the house had been calling premium rate porno lines for a laugh. :)

[@zachw2538]

I believe the repeated hangup trick you mentioned was shown in a mid 90's movie called "Hackers" kinda realistic but not really at the same time.

[@mikegarland4500]

I was prohibited from buying many games as a kid, as the computer was for education only. I still bought some with my own money, but at 12 yrs old, I couldn't get to many stores that sold software without having an adult take me. File copying with friends was the only significant source I had for tons of games that I otherwise would have missed out on.

[@tomsayen9295]

Worked for the local telco when I was 19 years old. Accompanied the guy who emptied the coins from pay phones. The bag of coins he took back to the central office always had a lot of pennies shaved down to look and feel like dimes. Another trick learned when I worked at a gas station that had a "business" pay phone: Lift receiver, drop in a nickel, when that nickel has traveled about half way into the coin box, use the receiver to bang the coin return, kind of like a hammer, phone with "ding" twice, we paid a nickel for all local calls. Of course this was 1970s when pay phones were solid metal with "sunflower" dials. You can still see these on old movies and TV shows.

[@adog3129]

tbh shaving down a penny sounds like more than 9¢ worth of work

[@CosmicKangaroo]

if someone wants to be real meta, bring an iBook to have him sign

[@dafoex]

And if he wants to be really meta, he'll have a PGP key ready

[@paulgraves1392]

If I wanted to get real-meta, I'd ask him to sign one of Dimebag's guitars.

[@yvrelna]

In RetroCon: "Everything I'm talking about is obsolete." Well if what you're talking about isn't obsolete, you are probably in the wrong place.

[@VentShop]

Yep, some third world countries still use the type of system that has went out of usage in the US and other more populated/upgraded countries. I wish I had access to this information when I was growing up though. I was always the geek but I didn't have any access to other people to get the information.

[@yvrelna]

@@VentShop Yes, like the Magstripe or the Imperial units. When will the rest of the world catch up to these great US inventions?

[@qstunrr]

John Ventshop hahaha pretty exact same here

[@deusexaethera]

@@yvrelna: The US didn't invent Imperial units, those were invented by England and France. (probably Spain too. basically every empire had their own measurement system.) The US adopted the English version, for obvious reasons. But nowadays, while the US respects the old ways and continues using Imperial units, the rest of the world has switched to Rebel...er, _Metric_ units.

[@terrenceryan8773]

No, if you're at "RetroCon", and what you're talking about is obsolete, you're probably in exactly the *right* place!!

[@HughJeffreys]

Wow thats amazing, thanks for sharing. Wasn't around in the 70s or 80s so this was very interesting, learned heaps. David you have great knowledge and everything was well explained.

[@darkrazorgames8742]

Hi

[@BoleDaPole]

80s were an amazing time to be alive, especially in the USA with its expanding economy and high standard of living when compared to literally anywhere else in the world. I'm guessing you weren't even born then or else you wouldn't say that.

[@therealtampadude9175]

@@BoleDaPole Yup...the '80s were awesome...it was the best decade for music and movies, hands down.

[@weseld1]

@@BoleDaPole I don't know about the "Lord of Nothing" but I was born in the 40s, not the 80s, and I think the 80s were great!

[@ballwidener]

Hugh Janus

[@Stormgeald]

In 1996/97 timeframe I was in the military and we used those MCI cards to call home on the payphones inside of our "dorms" I would lend my code out to others that didn't have one and we stumbled on accident that if you called the number on one payphone and then called the number on another payphone and input your codes at the same time and hung up with one it didn't use any minutes from your card. So I would say about 30 guys probably used one card the entire 6 months I was in technical training so they could call their family's.

[@adamsfusion]

4:07 "Pornographic Anime Magazine" David is so pure

[@NathanChisholm041]

He's secretly into Hentai! 😂

[@meemee1357]

I was near them in line... they seemed very nervous... I didn't know it was this, lol

[@Valery0p5]

@@meemee1357 you mean that's the footage of _those_ girls? I hope they knew he was recording LOL

[@DoomRater]

@@Valery0p5 Can you mind your own fucking business? Stalking someone over the internet by using footage of them to discover their identities is the antithesis of American values.

[@Trenchbroom]

Purity did not extend to phone phreaking or game piracy BITD it seems...

[@Calthecool]

I like how your videos haven’t aged, all of them from the last 4 years could be made on the same day.

[@FortoFight]

He made them all one day 4 years ago, stay woke.

[@Calthecool]

ULOIRAR U right

[@OnkelPeters]

The timelessness of yesteryear.

[@PrinssiFO]

Digital videos don't age as fast as analog ones, but still 4 years isn't enough time for a tape to show signs of age, unless you play it back too frequently.

[@lilith5865]

@@FortoFight lmao

[@jinjysbro]

when he starts talking about Dallas his Texas accent comes out

[@hihaveaniceday9386]

Accent ??

[@darsure3006]

@@hihaveaniceday9386 It's subtle but his Texas drawl definitely comes out when he talks about his home town, it's awesome. David is great.

[@hihaveaniceday9386]

@@darsure3006 I don't hear it thats why I was asking

[@booperdooperproductions2545]

@@darsure3006 Funny. I actually come from Dallas, and live in Austin currently, but have no Texan accent whatsoever. I’m actually terrible at trying to talk like that when I try to.

[@cats400]

Most Texans consider Dallas to be "southern Oklahoma". Dallas is more LA-ish than Austin, imo.

[@cnault3244]

18:13 "send the police immediately to investigate that pay phone" I'm thinking the police would give this type of thing a very low priority... unless it's the pay phone outside a donut shop.

[@JBadAss98Gameing]

Nah, Hacking into someones phone line, getting a free call on their expense, and calling the L.A.P.D is quite a few charges to catch actually.

[@Dillon69]

lol

[@funniflow]

I could just imagine the police: WHO TRIED TO CALL SOMEONE ON YOU!? Phone: *concerned dial tone*

[@MrWolfSnack]

This was the 70s and 80s, if you did that they would be on your ass like flies on shit quicker than you can blink. The reason they do not care now is prioritization of risk assessment. If it's not a serious crime, it's not worth expending that squad unit out on a call for something harmless when there could be a murder come in or a robbery that needs that squad there. Plus companies now have breakage clauses where they purposely overcharge money on things in their budget to account for money losses.

[@xXRedTheDragonXx]

I'm not sure this was ever true, but there might be a reason behind the myth. When I was growing up, someone I knew had a "Red Box" and the myth was that if you ever put more than $50 in the payphone, the police would show up because the phone couldn't handle that much money. We tested it, and the number was closer to $100. When we got to $100, the phone still had a dial tone but upon hanging up and picking up the phone again it played a message that was like "This phone requires service and can only make 911 calls". I think the myth probably came from someone hearing "This phone can only make 911 calls" and it meaning that the police were on there way.

[@JoeMitchell2]

This video would’ve been super helpful when I was writing my thesis on the early days of hacking, which required a huge amount of research and exposition on phreaking. Most people “know” about hacking (though a vast majority of those people are the type who think it can be done more quickly when two people team up on one keyboard) but almost no one really remembers phone phreaking. I attribute this to the aging-out of the folks who remember an analog tone-driven phone system from the population and the folks who *do* remember such a thing not knowing about phreaking, forgetting, or dying off. A couple of the people who read the paper recognized things from their youth and remarked that they had been completely unaware of both these techniques and the subculture, but that they had to some extent understood parts of the phone system structure like tone control and party line infrastructure. There’s a great deal to be learned about our technological history which connects back to phreaking - like how the Yippie movement was directly connected to it. They were formed as the Youth International Party Line, or YIPL, which is (arguably) why they became known as the Yippies - there’s dispute as to where the name comes from. Most sources agree however that the “party line” portion was a double-entendre (I think that’s the right word) which was referencing the party lines that phreaks used to hang out in. Their newsletter (titled “The Youth International Party Line, later changed to the Technology Assistance Program or TAP) focused HEAVILY on distributing phreaking methods as broadly as possible, partially because the folks involved were dedicated phreaks, but also because those less interested in phreaking WERE interested in screwing over the phone company and the US government, which worked together to collect a tax on phone calls which was seen as supporting the Vietnam War. This was just one in a long list of pretty valid complaints including a collaboration between the Bell System and the government to record millions of calls basically automatically when it was suspected a Box was being used, which prior to the PATRIOT Act was the largest domestic spying operation ever carried out in the US. Even most people who truly *know* hacking aren’t aware that some of the earliest hacktivism was part of the protest against the war in Vietnam which involved distributing information about how to make free calls to normies, much less the other intensely fascinating history of phreaking. Thank you for helping. Someday I’d like to do the kinds of things you do. I need to learn to be a better researcher first, though. I’m sure that I got a few things totally wrong in my paper, and probably even in this comment. It was a history degree, and I’m pretty sure everyone who read it was just like “ok, the source seems to be saying this, so even if I have zero idea what he’s talking about I just gotta go with it.” I hope as more people my age and younger become historians, the profession will become much more technologically aware - but we are losing so much history very day because it isn’t recorded anywhere, and by the time History as a profession starts to document early and immediately pre-computer-age history and the way it shaped our modern world, we will have forgotten a great deal of it. My paper was an attempt to fight back against that, in some small way. It did not do much, and it is likely that no one will ever read it again and that most who did read it have forgotten almost everything in it, but it’s something I’m proud of and I don’t have much of that in my life.

[@last808]

Hey that was a cool mini history on some early phreaking thanks for writing that! Any chance I could read your paper? What year did you write your paper? There was always 2600 Magazine (est. '84) or the Phrack ezine (est '85). There was another print zine... something 411 about phreaking but I can't remember anymore. And a million text files out there. 2600 is still going and Phrack hasn't updated since 2016 but people can still read old issues at phrack.org.

[@jakesabo954]

tl,dr no hate tho, bet it was cool

[@panwarhappy9368]

So you decided to write down your whole thesis on KZbin comment 🤣

[@JoeMitchell2]

GATE IES oh my lord, if you thought that was long you should’ve seen the first draft of the actual thing. My advisor had to *repeatedly* remind me of the maximum word & page count. Not minimum, MAXIMUM. Despite actually missing the deadline by a couple of hours, I was still only able to get it to a hundred words or so over the limit. I have a problem. I am aware.

[@xmlthegreat]

@@JoeMitchell2 hey would love to read your thesis, specially since I had a miserable experience working mine during covid times.

[@evandoorbell4278]

In 1981 I built a "war dialer" which DID listen to the line and COULD detect more than just modem tones. When "War Games" (later) came out , I felt like I'd been outed :-) You can hear my "war dialer" in the first "Early 80s" program on my KZbin channel

[@seraphina985]

Wasn't born until 85 so wasn't around to try something like that on the hardware at the time but would have thought that human and machine produced sounds would be distinctive enough to pull off a crude turing test by looking at the way tone and amplitude changes between samples. Perhaps I'm overestimating the capabilities of the hardware but would have thought a crude comparison of samples could differentiate the sharp tone and amplitude variations of machines of the time from the smooth transitions of human speech no? I guess it would be harder with acoustic modems due to background noise but I thought that direct connection modems for dedicated dial in systems already existed by then I've even seen one still in use as late as 2010 during my consulting work that had a direct modem, apparently banks can take if it ain't broke don't fix it a little too far only reason why they called us in to consult on an upgrade was that they had apparently been unable to maintain their buffer of spare parts, I know shocking right that they would run out on the market? lol but from their records the system in question was installed back in 1982 and it had a direct modem on it, forget what the speed of it was though it wasn't much single digit kbaud I think.

[@cmandrell]

i put a link to your library on here some where big fan

[@SolarDrew]

Evan Doorbell I did the same. Then I used it to continually dial a girlfriend that wouldn’t stop dialing my phone.

[@katzunjammer]

when i was at school in 1994 at my friend's house , his brother hacked a sex-chat line we heard someone phoning up to talk to a woman, he pretended he was a girl and talked the guy off as we listened and he then broke into a mans voice at the end. It was funny but desturbing at the same time. We were in the UK and the man on the phone was american.. so my freinds brother must have had his knowledge of this information from america... it was my only experience with hackers... i dont knwo much about computers.

[@LegoEngineer003]

katzunjammer I unintentionally found a way to break that site on mobile; press down on multiple at a time and one will get stuck playing. The effect can be done with any button and the sound can stack. I have a headache from the static now.

[@unclecreepy4185]

There’s a scene in the Chevy Chase film “Funny Farm” where he’s trying call from his home and the operator comes on to tell him to insert 25¢ and he’s trying to tell her it’s not a pay phone. So then he’s dropping quarters into a glass jar to make her think he’s adding money.

[@miked9466]

Ha ha I owned that movie. The house had many different things that annoys him and his wife, then the town seems to be full of nut jobs. The operator new it was him calling every time, as he tried many silly things that never made sense.

[@knuckletherapyserveothersf6092]

That's an awesome gaming convention. I wish we had one exactly like that one. With all those old school gaming and with those old TV setups. Brings back so many memories. Battles with all my cousins during the summer time . Thanks for the video. I appreciate it.

[@brankerroberts3360]

My man signed a doujinshi, I'm done lmao

[@Jellylamps]

He signed a doujin, a doujinshi is actually what the author is called

[@agentorange6441]

The Friend of Many Squirrels he should sign a doujinshi next !

[@Jellylamps]

agent orange ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[@Dakotajm0726]

I mean he said pornographic anime. Doesn't it have to be fan made to be doujinishi

[@lemon_skunk_4206]

@@Dakotajm0726 nah, doujin basically just means self published, so doujin doesn't have to be pornographic, it's just that it more often than not is. (can be just an original work, not exclusively a fan project of an already established thing)

[@fuwafuwa2299]

Who even is weird enough to ask someone to sign a hentai manga

[@lordvader3d]

Weebs are

[@hotaru8309]

I work security at conventions, all types, and it's very common. It's led to two kinds of signings, the bring what you want or... there's the second kind, where we have to deny anything but the "approved material" or "approved merch[which is sold at the booth, room, or table]" to bring to the signing table, because people will insist on getting someone to sign something they do not feel comfortable signing, usually pornography and "romantic"[read sexually suggestive] items made by fans and vendors who sell fanmade goods. This leads to people calling out actors for not signing certain items and picking it up and slapping it down, or sliding it closer to the artist/creator forcing them to formally decline at which point the fan becomes visably upset, tears, red cheecks, and if not moved swiftly, a voice raises and people behind them start looking to see what's going on, thus making the guest signing at the event even more uncomfortable and in the cases that tend to lead to only allowing items from that table to be signed, the screaming that the creator/ performer is homophobic, transphobic, racist until the security officers must be alerted to remove the fan from the signing hall or convention center, depending on the setup. They may require removal from the premises and ruin the chances for others not only to get their items signed that day, but ever. More and more signers only sign the prepared photos they bring with them and other items are not allowed on the table. It's sad, especially when someone is all dressed up or excited to meet "Scooby-Doo," but there's only a picture of "some guy."

[@toomanyaccounts]

@@hotaru8309 This shows how mentally ill these so called fans are. Why would a celeb want to sign some homosexual or scat smut that a fan made? Also these so called fans were using the signing as an endorsement of their smut which they then sold on various sites.

[@AlexanderBogdanow]

@@toomanyaccounts SJWs and the current state of western culture... What do you expect?!

[@MilesProwerStudios78]

@@toomanyaccounts who would sign a Hentai magazine

[@thatmatt41]

Hearing the 8 bit guy say "pornographic anime magazine" makes me laugh so hard

[@timthepoolman3313]

This comment made me stain my pants

[@typodoeseverything]

Tim the pool man that is wrong on so many levels

[@OmarrMcinnis]

Pretty much all of anime can be extremely pornographic back then...

[@KylesDigitalLab]

4:07

[@FSXgta]

It's called hentai and it's art

[@livefreeprintguns]

I always wanted to get into phreaking, but the fact my mom worked her entire life at the phone company (throughout all iterations of Nynex, Bell Atlantic, Verizon, etc...) scared me enough to never do anything lol. I did create a redbox and used it a handful of times at the payphone in my high school's cafeteria in a futile attempt to "impress" girls that had no clue what I was doing or even cared I was getting them free phone calls lol.

[@raven4k998]

oh my god Darth Vader playing the bag pipes while riding a unicycle who would have thought🤣

[@danopticon]

I still remember the day I independently accidentally discovered dropping a pair of scissors near a telephone’s mouthpiece was just the right frequency to make the phone do peculiar things… 😇

[@Camel_Jockey]

This took me way down memory lane. I wish my dad was still alive so I could show this to him so we could reminisce about those times. Thank you 8-Bit Guy for your videos.

[@a580baby]

Anyone from Portland knows that is not the only place you can see a man in a Darth Vader mask riding a unicycle playing the bagpipes

[@blaze9000g]

true

[@saisubdivision3941]

Or a waluigi making his way downtown

[@WhiplashPresents]

the thing that makes it way better is that he’s playing the final countdown

[@saisubdivision3941]

@@WhiplashPresents it’s the final countdown

[@nootaboot7042]

yeah i don't doubt you

[@samsonchan1488]

Wow, my friends and I did this in 1994. More specifically, my more technically proficient friends (and ones with the first dialup internet) found out how to do this (and other illegal things). They made me “red box” from a “phone “dialer” and other parts ordered from Radio Shack, because I was spending so much money calling my long distance girlfriend. My friends told me to run if I heard strange noises when using it, because the FBI would send the local police due to it being a federal offense to “hack” the phone company. As a poor high school kid, I definitely used it A LOT (until we broke up that is), but every time I used it, I’d look over my shoulders. Never knew how it really worked until now, in 2021, almost 30 years later. 😄 Thank you 🙏

[@nomorecheezmeh]

@fbi here you go, where's my reward.

[@MrWolfSnack]

@@nomorecheezmeh Nice try kid. Learn about statute of limitations.

[@agentmueller]

@@MrWolfSnack I’ll be the judge of that. Infact, I’m sending my agents out promptly.

[@Prizm44]

"I'll be the judge of that." 😂😂

[@CarlScripter]

I'm so glad I ran into you and got a selfie... That makes it three years in a row!!!

[@blackcitroenlove]

I remember learning my home phone number by singing the DTMF tones as I heard them. Didn't know about Asperger and was diagnosed two years ago, at 36.

[@rebelrailz.]

My significant-other has Asperger's, too. I think he was diagnosed when he was pretty young.

[@KenSharp]

@@rebelrailz. Absolutely fascinating.

[@slowfuse]

tbf if you are watching this channel there is a 50/50 chance you have the Sperg

[@stevejquest]

I clicked 👍 for a fellow Aspie, however I don't believe you could ever successfully reproduce dual tone signals with your mouth, with both tones oscillating at the exact frequency. 😊

[@--..__]

@@stevejquest actually our voices are usually dual tone, that's what formants are :) still difficult or near impossible tho. I agree

[@leomdk939]

i had never heard of 'phreaking' before and so I read the title as, "How the telephone freaking WORKED" i was ... a bit confused.

[@drewgates1167]

Poor zoomer.

[@leomdk939]

@@drewgates1167 I've been "ok boomer'd" before and now you're "ok zoomer"ing me? People need to make up their damn minds about how they want to stereotype me. Anyway, you're both wrong, I'm 39, so I am either an older Millennial or a younger Gen-X or perhaps even a Xennial, depending on who you ask, and I prefer Boomers and Boomer culture, so you're even wronger than they are.

[@drewgates1167]

@@leomdk939 i am sorry for your sad childhood. I am also a xennial.

[@leomdk939]

@@drewgates1167 If your childhood joy was centered around prank phone calls then I think you should maybe reconsider which one of us had the sad childhood. ;)

[@drewgates1167]

@@leomdk939 pranking does not necessarily need phreaking. You just wasted 1's and 0's.

[@SteveKasian]

Aaah, the memories. I can't count the number of computers I found with my war dialer, or how many MCI codes I phreaked manually. I would call all over the US, just because I could. I'd call random numbers to Hawaii and other far away places. I remember one time there was a major hurricane slamming into Hawaii, so I called some HI numbers. One of them was a convenience store/market, and I was asking the person what was going on with the weather. They described to me how crazy it was, and it was a thrill for some unknown reason. Phone Man was the program I used to phreak the phone system. I believe it was coded by The Moter City Madman. It wasn't nearly as extensive as Dr. Pepper's prog., but I used my hacked MCI codes to track down MCMM (pretty obvious where he operated out of - Motor City ;-). I finally found him and talked to him on the phone, and he told me how to use all the different color box tones, how the phone system worked, etc. Those were tha days. The good ol' Commodore 64 and Westridge 6420 Automodem - a whole 300 BAUD! Boy, was that FAST at the time! LOL Great memories of a bygone era.

[@JabrHawr]

what era was that - e.g. 80s, early 90s etc.? Ignore this/don't disclose if you think that that may incr1m1nate you

[@MasterGeekMX]

David: I went to Portland Me: *that is the home of the Unipiper* David: Darth vader on a monocycle playing the bagpipe Me: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA YEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[@lilith5865]

Literally me

[@AOClaus]

Seems like people were having terrible identifying when he played Sonic.

[@edsworkouts6460]

And it shoots fire sometimes. I've seen him in a few videos.

[@PendragonDaGreat]

Some people really like to "Keep Portland Weird"

[@MortonSeinfeld]

The invention of bagpipes and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[@leektah354]

You should have mentioned the blind phone phreaks back in the day who could simply whistle tones into the phone.

[@jsihavealotofplaylists]

Sounds unreal!

[@richlaue]

Probably not true since two tones had to be whistled at the same time.

[@FACTBOT_5000]

Didn't Dan Aykroyd do that in a movie?

[@lordmikethegreat]

@@FACTBOT_5000 Spies Like Us, I believe....

[@FACTBOT_5000]

@@lordmikethegreat I just figured it out. The movie is *Couch Trip* from 1988. He makes a device out of an ambulance pager that he can use as a phone he dials with his voice, and uses it to escape a mental institution. Very funny.

[@mattblom3990]

Never change your soundtrack David. Love the Synthwave tracks you always use!

[@timurtheterrible4062]

"pornographic anime magazine" That's one way to call it.

[@MultiRobotnik]

When did you become a far-left extremist?

[@timurtheterrible4062]

@@MultiRobotnik Don't even remember, honestly.

[@ratfarmer1]

@@timurtheterrible4062 based

[@probes-arealone]

@@ratfarmer1 You're 🤤

[@ratfarmer1]

@@probes-arealone what

[@Gamerroemer]

"and i was also asked to sign a porngraphic anime magazine" and it was that day The 8-Bit Guy discovered what hentai was

[@Milamberinx]

"Why I do declare, this young lady has her ankles on show! My word!"

[@hexyoutubeaccount]

8-Bit guy spends this whole video explaining how him and his friends pirated files in the 80’s over phone lines. Using phreaking techniques to connect to other people’s modems on the other side of the world for free. The man been knew what hentai is. Probably for longer than I’ve been alive.

[@eustache_dauger]

It's called hentai, and it's art.

[@TheMrRuttazzo]

@@Milamberinx "In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. but now god knows, anything goes!"

[@gamewizardks]

"Here's a few hundred quarters, call someone who cares."

[@redsquirrelftw]

That was interesting. I work for the phone company so it's neat to see this sort of thing. Believe it or not, phreaking still sorta happens. Typically it's through PBXes now. They will dial a number that reaches a voice mail, or an auto attendant, and they will use certain button sequences to get an outside line, then they can do long distance calls and it gets charged to the company. Oh and I totally made use of playing back tones over speakers once when I was younger. It was for a legit reason too. I was something to do about my driver's license, and part of the IVR required me to enter the full license code including letters, it was a long process, and if you were not fast enough it would hang up on you. So I prerecorded the entire sequence and then played it, and it worked! I was proud of myself back then haha.

[@HerecomestheCalavera]

But aren't long distance calls free everywhere?

[@tunahant.3361]

@@HerecomestheCalavera its expensive in Germany to call outside of Germany, roaming is free in Europe

[@anthrobug]

I had an Novation (? ) AppleCat II modem back then, it was not only able to generate all of these tones - it also was able to detect busy signals, voice, rings, etc. Basically, it was the perfect war-dialer in the late 70s/early 80s. And at a time of 300 baud modems, it could handle a one-way ( single duplex ) transfer at 1200baud. Very, very useful back then ;)

[@filipmac5577]

Yah, I remember not paying for long distance calls. We did a similar thing in the eastern block but we had to be extremely cautious to not get caught by the secret police.

[@TheSixShoota]

Was it possible to call to a "forbiden western" country using these methods?

[@no1DdC]

@@TheSixShoota Likely not. Connections between countries weren't automated yet, at least in the Eastern Block, so you had to call a telephone exchange (like in the early days of telephony) where someone would manually connect you to the country you wanted to dial to. This of course meant that there was only a very limited number of simultaneous connections possible and it was trivially easy for the government to listen in to your calls.

[@Kr-nv5fo]

@@no1DdC Not that easy for for normal people, even foreigners. My father was in Kiev in the late 70's and to call Sweden or Finland he had to go to a telegraph/telephone office thing to schedule his call, identify himself, pay for the call; then he'd be assigned a booth with his call connected at the scheduled time.

[@no1DdC]

@@Kr-nv5fo The process I described was how it was done in East Germany in the 1980s (and I think larger cities in the Soviet Union as well, but don't quote me on that).

[@71bw]

@@TheSixShoota If the OC is from Poland, as I think by looking at his profile picture (logo of FSO, a now-defunct Polish car manufacturer) then I can answer for him: no, it wasn't.

[@justahungarianguy]

Ayy, David! Almost 1M congrats!

[@FerHivore]

I love how every cosplayer thought you were taking photos.

[@Mishkafofer]

well he did but in 30fps.

[@SianaGearz]

​@@Mishkafofer You mean 30phps.

[@goeland4585]

@@SianaGearz ... That's the joke you're going with?

[@PascalvandenBos]

i love your presentations, they’re extremely informative and interesting to watch, this is the second time im watching this one right after the one on AST. I hope i can see one live one day!

[@javierortiz82]

You make a great point that I've trying people to get for years now: a pirated game isn't an unfulfilled sale.

[@omikronweapon]

doesn't really apply anymore though. back in the day there was maybe one shop that had a few floppies in the back of the store. My buddy actually had like five double barreled floppy boxes full of pirated amiga games his uncle arranged for him. My games came from a adult neighbour. That's honestly the only way me and my friends knew to even GET games. Never saw them in stores. Nowadays you can order them anywhere. And we all have jobs or parents to beg for games for presents. Bottomline, if you honestly didn't have a dime, it's a somewhat valid excuse. But "I've got a job, but this game's price is just bullshit, they should be glad I'm at least PLAYING it", that doesn't cut it.

[@lochinvar00465]

That was really the point that showed that the "piracy" that producers were complaining about was a bit of an over-reach. The same applies to movies. "pirating" a movie or game that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise is not a "lost sale" as they try to claim.

@@omikronweapon how about i pirate because why pay for a mediocre game thats under 10 hours of gameplay in most cases?

[@jonathaningram8157]

Now we don’t have that excuse with steam and really good games for only a few bucks.

[@peterdvornik]

@ why would you play a mediocre game for 10 hours?

[@shatteredgod69]

*70s:* I'll break the law to get a free call. *2k19 has free calls and texts:* doesn't talk to anyone.

[@annother3350]

Yeh, but you rinse the shit out of that 'modem'

[@faithm.173]

Not free, see the ads relevant to you?

[@GeorgiaRidgerunner]

Same here have phone service and long distance I use the phone maybe 3 times a month and long distance maybe 20 times since I had a cell phone

[@SherrifOfNottingham]

The average Google user's data is worth about 17k a year. Why are we paying for internet?

[@faithm.173]

@Shadow Banned exactly, nothing's free 🙃

[@comput3rman77]

When I was living up in Maine in the early 90's, the town I lived in had their own phone company and since the entire town had the same exchange code, you only had to dial the 4 digit station number to make the phone call. All that changed when the phone company finally got a digital exchange, the old exchange was an old mechanical exchange and that meant it was pulse dial. I'm not even sure most Gen x'rs have memories of pulse dial or rotary phones.

[@jonnycando]

computerman13 I do and yes we had four digit phone numbers.....so long as we were calling locally.

[@kakarroto007]

We remember rotary phones. What we don't remember, is the phone numbers with words in them: "operator!" "Operator here!" "operator, get me Springfield 3455." "right away, sir!" ------- "sir, Springfield 3455 is busy, would you like me to try again?" "No thanks, operator. have a nice day!" "You too, sir!"

[@jonnycando]

kakarroto007 we didn’t use those but we had phones that still had the word printed on them.....ours was PARk-4751

[@TrueThanny]

It's not a concrete range, but by the most common measure, the youngest Gen X person is either 40 or will be 40 by the end of this year. That's plenty old enough to remember pulse dialing and rotary phones. In my state, they didn't stop charging more for Touch-Tone until the mid 2000's, so many people just chose not to get it (we didn't get it until I was in my teens). When my grandmother moved out of her house of 50+ years in 2001, she still had a leased rotary AT&T phone from the 1950's. There are still a small number of people using these today, due to inertia.

[@Gossamer2]

I had the Commodore 1660; 300 baud white modem which only did rotary dialing, and figured out how to speed up the rotary dialing and still have the number go through. I managed to get it to dial really fast. It made trying to get on to your favourite BBS much more tolerable.

[@jayl878]

I'd love to go to that convention. I remember having my BBS learning all of this stuff. I was only 11-13 when I was into it but could still get free LD from people w/ call forwarding systems when I was in college. I'm so glad that I found this channel.

[@trreb1]

I had a friend with me one Halloween night when we were about 14 yrs old and I told him I could call anyone I wanted from the corner of a corn field just down from our houses. He thought I was lying. We went to the corner to a phone pole and I removed the little round cover on the side of the pole. Took my dads antique lineman's phone out, hooked up the 2 clips and said who do we call? He said I don't know so I called the operator and asked to be connected to the L.A.P.D. The lady that answered on the other end was cool about it. I told her I was calling from a corn field in Michigan and wanted to say Happy Halloween to someone on the west coast but I didn't know anyone out there so I called them. I knew she started tracing the call. We stayed on the line until we saw the police coming down the road and took off thru the corn field back to my house. We had a lot of fun back then. We found out later that the neighbor who's line we hooked to couldn't figure out how he got billed for a call to L.A.P.D. LOL

[@pschiptunes64]

Damn, that’s cool.

[@Videocipher]

What year was this?

[@GCMS]

Nice try LAPD

[@SynZ777]

Hopefully the statue of limitations ran out on that lol.

[@BananaPhoPhilly]

@@SynZ777 Which statue? David? :D

[@dreammfyre]

"Pornograhic anime magazine" Never heard of those things! Is that what the kids call "hentai"?

[@couldntmixapotnoodle]

My jaw just about fell off when he said he signed hentai.

[@MuitoDaora]

"Anime magazine" cracked me up 😂

[@gobletoffireable]

"Pornographic anime magazine", now that's a good way to say hentai.

[@Luxcium]

陈文鑫 overall there is nothing wrong with it, as long as they keep it clean, when they show little children and women getting done by slimy tenticles, thats VERY wrong! love it or loathe it though, its here to stay. (Copy/pasted from Internet)

[@trevorgray3681]

@@Luxcium reason they use tentacles is because all porn in Japan has to be censored. Replacing a dick with a tentacle would mean that less has to be censored.

[@MysticalRubix]

But it’s art.

[@MasterGeekMX]

In that regard. "solidified cow secretions" is another way of saying cheese.

[@BradenBest]

@@MasterGeekMX I mean it's true. That's what cheese is. You want some fried pig fat strips and solidified animal boob fluids with that slab of ground-up grilled cow flesh?

[@jonathanguthrie9368]

The reason you needed to dial a random MCI access code was because MCI would notice if you just tried them sequentially. There was a then famous court case where a guy who got caught doing that.

[@Eremon1]

During the 80's some kids I knew, myself included carried a safety-pin that you could insert into the receiver of the handset at a payphone and then touch the pin to ground and it would bypass the need for a quarter. Worked into the early 90's. I don't know why it worked but it did.

[@chrisj197438]

Eremon1 I just commented the same thing. I remember it well. We used a paper clip and called it a calling card lol

[@thechardestyiv]

Someone in high school showed me this and I graduated in 97

[@paulsolfelt8452]

That trick still worked here until about 2006 when they switched to digital but the quarter on a string still worked until the payphones all disappeared! In the 80s you could get a free call by using the Starkey a certain way!

[@Evgenii_Fedorovskii]

When you find out that someone "broke the system" - it is so inspiring! = D Thank you for the video! The most interesting 30 minutes on KZbin, lately =)

[@mmckinley345]

This one sure brought back some memories, I tell my students about this stuff and they can't believe I had a mullet, earring and never paid for a phone call.

[@davidjames579]

How did anyone find out about the exact tone that would fool the system? Or how to recreate it?

[@mmckinley345]

@@davidjames579 tone generators

[@davidjames579]

@@mmckinley345 Was it just random try-outs on that to see which tone worked?

[@mmckinley345]

@@davidjames579 most of it was listening to what the phone did and repeating it. I found out it was a combo because my phone would make one tone then a combo of the two tones the further you pushed the button down.

[@mmckinley345]

@@davidjames579 most hackers it's about being courious how tech works. Taking it apart, any tech was fair game. Phones radios walkie talkies realizing it all used the same pieces to work I realized I could make it so what I wanted using parts harvested from items from the trash.

[@c.j.1089]

I was on the very tail end of this phenomenon, and only really got a few years of experience before the phone networks were all changed. What really surprised me was to learn that the 8-bit guy literally lived a few miles from me. Hell, I might have even war dialed him a few times.

[@adog3129]

honestly the war dialing part seems infinitely more unethical than the stealing part, if you do it in the middle of the night. it wouldn't be a major annoyance to anyone, but the sheer volume of people who would be mildly annoyed by the actions of one person is just messed up.

Darth Scot was playing Europe's"The Final Countdown". That gave it yet another level.

[@GlyphWolf]

Dad used to tell me about phreaking when he was a teen. I gotta say, this was a really easy to understand explanation of the techniques! So cool!

[@JeffFrmJoisey]

In the mid 70s, we were afraid of the "Phone Police." We limited our freaking to tricking one dorm payphone to make local calls and another for Long Distance calls. We also reverse engineered numerous pieces of KTU equipment and managed to invent and connect together in ways not intended to create a 25 number exchange. Soldering relays on perf board to do neat things could be tedious. A few rooms could even get a "Dial 9" outside line. They all rang simultaneously with a steady ring for incoming calls. There were a bunch of control wires going to each phone. KISS was out of the window. Also modified a 20 Button Business set to work as the control console. Too bad I wasn't getting an Electrical Engineering BS, this would have been one heck of a grade booster!!

[@VashStarwind]

3:29 Metal Jesus teaching 8 bit guy how to do the rock on sign is the most wholesome thing I have seen in a while haha

[@DanielDGordon]

I would love to see a documentary about the telephone companies response to how they panicked over patching this glaring hole in their system.

[@cortedemico]

a very *short* documentary...

[@Gynotai]

They upgraded their switches. Back in the day when they used the "step by step" system, anytime you made a long distance (LD) call an operator would come on the line and ask you your phone number. Didn't want to pay for the call? Just tell them another phone number. Then there was the "crossbar" system. This eliminated the operator, so using tone generators (as described in this video) were the norm. Then there was ESS (electronic switching system). This put a stop to phreaking because the new switches could detect 2600Hz tones in the phone line, and if you did it too many times your got a visit from the feds. So to answer your question, they upgraded the switches. Hope this answered your question.

[@wojomojo]

@@Gynotai Signalling System 7. That's how they overcame the problems. They took the telephone network signaling out of the audio channel, so those boxes won't work.

[@CHAOSMOVEMENT]

@@Gynotai I used to use the tone generator ON the operator and get put through lol

[@Gynotai]

@@CHAOSMOVEMENT Love those inward operators. :)

[@garychap8384]

Obsolete? 47 years old and still phreaking 'n' wardialing those ITF's in 2019... also, PBX-hopping around the world is still a thing ; ) Then you got all the VoIP tricks for false ANI/CLIP... and there's the xDSL version ofbBeiging (planting signal processing devices for manipulating data) which can be pretty brutal... and using an SCI/SCD on business lines for various nefarious reasons. Then there's all those automation and control systems still using SMS or tones over 2G, POCSAG or so many other over-the-air systems with terrible (or no) encryption... always fun. ... then there's the foreign carrier inbound numbers which still take telco cards and credit cards... and for some reason DECT is still a thing, when it shouldn't be... and mail order answer machines still use default pins... Telecoms is STILL a massive playground, it just lacks a decent sized ball-pit - whereas in the early days it was ALL ball-pit. I was so hoping to see a Motorola 4800 mentioned in this talk, snarfing ESN/MIN pairs, tracking people and performing "Voice of God" on one or both sides of peoples calls. Cellular was the phreaks biggest playground after CCITT - the phreaks completely brutalised the emerging cellular phone system! Then there was all the cloning... here NEC P3's were popular, whilst in the US it was typically the OKI 900. I used a customised Ericson 237eh because it was truly tiny. So, no, freaking is still very much alive : ) Saying it went away is like saying carding went away - sure, techniques change, but that's all : /

[@mrfujiwara-JJ]

This guy phreaks

[@Android480]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/qH2nmISda8ekbdE

[@garychap8384]

@@Android480 Sorry you feel so excluded. Unfortunately, I can't find any childrens books on IT Security that have colourful pictures and large print you can follow with your finger. Luckily, you don't need to understand much to reach porn sites with your browser - so I'm sure you'll be just fine ; )

[@garychap8384]

@ She never uploaded any, perhaps she doubted anyone was into octagenarian porn. But I'll certainly let her know you're interested. In the meantime, I do have some photos of my grandmother from the wake, if you think that'll tide you over.

[@dave-yj9mc]

Take it easy Gary Snowden, your gettin me excited!!!! You sound like the real deal. I just remember playing some hacking simulator around 1985ish +/-, and my mom came into my room and asked me "what are you doing?" I said, "oh just hacking into some tv satellite..." She said "Ok... we are going out for dinner now...." Me, "Ok almost done." Then we get to the restaurant and the TV's are all Fukd up.... My mom asked whats wrong the the TVs? Guy answers, "I don't know, the Satellite is all messed up." I got the dirtiest Look from my mom!!!!!!!! "I swear I didn't do it!!" lol

[@CDP-1802]

Awesome video! I never knew about the calling card hacking...interesting

[@bilman6639]

CDP 1802 how you get here 14 hours ago, this vid just came

[@user-mv6yv9ec1b]

The fuck why does this comment have 14 hours ago

[@CloroxBleachOfficial]

14 hours ago??

[@among-us-99999]

He got to see the video earlier because he paid for it (well...not "paid"..rather donated)

[@CDP-1802]

@@bilman6639 Time Phreaking, I used an iridescent box :)

[@EASsirenVids01]

“And this may be the only place you will ever see Darth Vader riding a unicycle and playing the bagpipes” This is comedy gold

[@MilesProwerStudios78]

I wish I saw someone cosplaying as demoman and demo man playing

[@alt0248]

Also, he's playing the final countdown

[@EASsirenVids01]

@@alt0248 LMAO HE IS

[@TheSilent333]

What a great flashback. I used to make and sell red boxes when I was in high school. Great extra cash for the summer. Glad I never got caught haha. Thanks for the great trip down memory lane!

[@zrobeast]

TheSilent333 Which high school did you go to and what year did you graduate? Asking for a friend who is not the police.

[@jaysonl]

I still have an old Radio Shack voice memo thing with red box tones recorded on it. Not that I had anyone I wanted to call... all my friends were on IRC :)

[@omargoodman2999]

Quarter: 5 beeps Dime: 2 beeps Nickel: 1 beep It's just one beep per 5 cents

[@OriginalSmoothOperator]

I was expecting him to show the pennies in a jelly jar scene from Funny Farm when he referenced that part. :)

[@markofexcellence5209]

Back in the day when people could go to large events together

[@HaswellCore]

watching those crowds makes me feel uncomfortable

[@GlamStacheessnostalgialounge]

Back in the day? Chill dude it hasn't even been a year yet.

[@jblps]

@@GlamStacheessnostalgialounge Seeing his comment with "6 months ago" really bummed me out

[@unknownsamn7114]

Back in the days when this comment was written when Corona wasn't even harmfull...

[@Tailz303]

@@unknownsamn7114 trust me, the "8 months ago" is worse.

[@Malryth]

Nice video. Brings back some good memories. I did see a copy of that computer program you were demonstrating. However, my only foray into Phreaking was a trick a kid showed me with pay phones. No tech required. You knocked the receiver part of the phone against something hard to loosen the end (I forget now if it was the listening part or the talking part). All we were doing once it was unscrewed was touching the metal receiver cradle (which was metal), with the inner "metal" part of the exposed receiver. That simulated closing the circuit, which was all the quarter did in those older pay phones. Good for local calls (up here in Ontario a quarter got you unlimited talk time as long as it was local).

[@jSyndeoMusic]

I read about this years ago in Steve Wozniak’s autobiography “iWoz”. Fascinating stuff! He even talked about Captain Crunch just like you do here.

[@jordanwhite352]

As someone who did this back in the day when I was a kid you did a really good job covering this. Two things I would add. one is that before you get to John draper you might want to bring up joybubbles and the other deaf phone phreaker's who first played with the phone system. Second if you want to show a live example of how a phone system would have reacted to phone freaking back of the day I highly recommend to use the public number for Project MF: projectmf.org/

[@SherrifOfNottingham]

Interestingly enough I learned how phones used to work through my theater department. The theater essentially had a miniature version of the telephone system installed with it, it made putting phones on stage really easy with the ability for stage managers and audio techs able to make it ring while also acting like a real phone. In college I was disappointed when they had a ringer box, you plug the phone line into this box and press a button and it triggered the ringer. It was so much more disappointing... Even if it was admittedly less accident prone and more efficient.

[@3DPDK]

I have a "phone fact" even David is too young to remember, that sort of went away in the 60s: The first phone number I memorized was my grandparents phone - it was BR9 - 5264. The 'BR' stood for "Broadway" and it was just as appropriate to say "Broadway 9 - 5264" when telling someone the phone number. Some might recall the Glenn Miller Band's tune "Pennsylvania six - five thousand" The name represented one of many substations (operator's switch board or automatic switching station) within a city and it was usually significant to some named area of the city. Broadway referred to the substation at the northern end of Broad Street in Philadelphia. The single number that followed was one of 8 groups of 10,000 circuits each, within that station. Only 8 main circuits because no three digit phone "exchange" number could begin with a '0' or a '1'. No matter what you dialed after the zero an operator would answer, although this was a way to pre-dial an "operator assisted call", and dialing an initial '1' always triggered a manually dialed long distance call. Direct dialed long distance was not fully implemented nation wide until the mid 60s and required an operator to connect you to a trunk line to your destination. Everything David is showing only became possible with the introduction of dual frequency (hence the name "phreaking") tone dialing which wasn't wide spread until the late 60s and early 70s.

[@grantorino2325]

I heard that nearly all of the exchanges had the names of Anglo-Saxon or Dutch families. (e.g. "Butterworth [2-8]," "Wakefield [9-2]," and "Vanderbilt [8-2].") Once telephone numbers grew to 7 digits, that became too cumbersome and thus went out of fashion. Good thing, in my opinion, since I could never come up with a WASP surname using 9-7. :P

[@CaalamusTube]

I was born in '81 & up until like 5 or 6 years ago, GR 4 8481 was time & temperature in Syracuse NY :]

[@3DPDK]

@@grantorino2325 Of course, Vanderbuilt is a boulevard or avenue in a lot of major cities. Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England and at least a settlement area in Texas and a farming area in south-eastern Virginia. Having grown up in Virginia I know that the family name Wakefield is pretty wide spread through the eastern area of Va along the North Carolina boarder who's ancestors came from England. These places and streets were most often named after people that initially settled the area, or names of people important to the history of the city, so the phone switching stations would be named after the area or roads where they were located. Often that was a name of a person. Pennsylvania X - xxxx was named for the area surrounding Penn Station in New York city, part of the Pennsylvania Railroad Network - which Pennsylvania was ultimately named after it's founder, a Dutchman, William Penn so your statement is not too far off the mark, however, AT&T and Bell Telephone didn't name the stations after the people, but after the places that were named after people. It was all about keeping track of locations, not about honoring any particular person.

[@3DPDK]

@@CaalamusTube I couldn't tell you what GR stands for - you should know better then I would if you live there. It's likely a street name, development area name or the name of some nearby land mark - something significant to the area around Syracuse. The interesting thing is that many of the named phone exchanges that existed in the north-east U.S. - especially New York and Connecticut from the 1930s and later are still valid land line numbers today. "Ma" Bell stubbornly held on to the existing equipment and phone numbers when Bell and AT&T went their separate ways. No one uses the two letter abbreviations any more, but they are still official designations of the exchange.

[@CaalamusTube]

@@3DPDK Yeah... many people just referred to the number as 474-8481. But I knew of it from my Mom/her Parents. So they used the old naming convention. If memory serves, it was "Greenleaf". Although, this corresponds to no landmark that I know of.

[@phantom21629]

This was an awesome age. I was in middle school when I figured this out. By the time I was in high school I bought one of those small pocket recorders from radio shack and recorded all the coin drops and long distance tone. Never paid for a payphone call again. Long distance was a pain for me because I lived right on the county line so a lot of my friends were long distance calls but were within walking distance. Good times.

[@leechjim8023]

Thank God for unlimited cell plans!😁

[@Mr_Top_Hat_Jones]

Wow, I haven’t thought about that stuff in years. It makes me remember and miss all the BBSs I frequented. I remember finding out about phreaking from The Anarchist Cookbook (which could be found on many a BBS). :)

[@fineartonfire_5327]

Man those pre-paid phone cards saved a MANY of GIs lives when we were deployed overseas. Lol. Wow, that was the good ole days, I had nearly forgot that until this video came up.

[@artdcora]

3:29 MetalJesus showing David how to throw up the horns is the single purest moment on this channel

[@ucitymetalhead]

and he did it again in his speech when he said "two".

[@artdcora]

@@Dudebrush4pwood I wonder if he knew about that

[@joaohenriquesouza1480]

When I was a kid in the early 2000s payphones in Brazil worked with magnetic cards that used credits to make the phone calls, there were 20, 50 and 100 credits cards, when your credits reached zero you would just throw then away. My brother learned from a friend in school a way to reset the credits count on depleted cards. We painted the entire back side of the cards with a ballpoint pen and let then on the freezer for a couple of days, when you inserted then on the payphone again it was like a brand new card with full credits. I would go around in pay phones searching for depleted cards people left there and took then home to do this trick so we never had to spend money buying new ones. It wouldn't always work and was labor intensive cause the coating needed to be spotless, around 1/3 of a bic pen was spent on each card. Cellphones became popular soon after, making payphones obsolete, those cards are colectors itens now. Damn, I miss those days.