Talk:Phreaking

For those of you that remember Scavenger's Dialer, Scavenger passed away sadly in a car accident on 6 Feb 2002. Afekz 16:14, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

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This page has recently been butchered by people who do not know whereof they speak. Eventually I will attempt to fix it. Mbstone 17:47, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Could you please be a bit more specific if this still applies at all? Falcon 02:53, Mar 22, 2004 (UTC)

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I just read in this article about how you can dial a number by rapidly taping the 'hang-up hook'. So I picked a simple phone number (411), and tried. Freaking cool, it worked! You never know what you'll learn from reading Wikipedia! ike9898 02:21, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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Possibly apocrypha, but I always remember hearing that blind kids made up a large part of the "cutting edge" of phreaking. Anyone ever remember hearing similar? (First spotted it in the Esquire article linked to from the 'blue box' article, a few years ago...Then heard rumors.)

On one hand, it makes some sense; Schools for the blind were (and are) notoriously constricting places, and prior to mainstreaming, the vast majority of blind kids were sent to them. As one may expect, when you essentially put a bunch of preteen kids into a cage, they begin getting creative.

On the other hand...it almost sounds too good (for me) to be true...<grumble>

-Penta 00:44, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It is essentially true but the field was not exclusive to them. A lot of them were bad at it, like a lot of seeing people were good at it. Now, it is not a question of being good or bad but diligent. Falcon 02:52, Mar 22, 2004 (UTC)

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It's almost completely true actually. A gentleman by the name of Mark Bernay (an alias actually) taught the blind kids mentioned in that Esquire article about phreaking. Mark had learned from someone he bumped into on a loop randomly. He never met this person, but what he told him worked. These blind kids proceeded to teach the well known Cap'n Crunch all about what they had learned, and the rest is history. sam 07:10, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

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I question the edit made by 202.7.x.x. If anyone agrees, please revert. Falcon 16:29, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I don't see the point in removing the stuff about TAP. That's factually accurate as far as I know. sam 05:41, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

Anything else, or can the edit be reverted? Falcon 17:47, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

After reading closely, I'd say revert. That seems to be a generally accepted aspect of phreaking history. 202.7.x.x can always add to this discussion if she/he thinks we're wrong. sam 02:00, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)

Joe Engressia is the FIRST Phreaking

Where is he? He was the first!!!

I agree - he has been mentioned of course as the blind whistler with perfect pitch which reports Draper then first used the whistle and Woz says the same thing basically, along with rotten.com bio library on Draper. A link to the History of Phone Phreaking is a required!!! along with Captain Crunch's page already listed. =) thanks

Huge Update

I greatly updated this article, and feel I helped it out tremendously. I re-named the Origins of Phreaking to History of Phreaking, because I felt it was more informative. Sorry to whoever wrote the Origins, Crossbar, and Modern Day Phreaking sections but I basically gutted and re-wrote those sections completely because they were vague, uninformative, and in some cases just plain wrong. No offense. I included a link to the crossbar article in it's involvement for this article, but a lengthy description of crossbar is really not neccessary. I added a lot about the interrelation between computer hacking and phreaking, and also refined the definition quite a bit. If you notice any grammatical errors, feel free to fix. I'd like to see future development of this page, including examples of the spread of phreaking from the US to other countries (UK, Australia?). I feel brevity is optimal compared to choppiness at this point. I don't know how to do that though, so if somebody could do that for me, it'd be appreciated. Also can somebody fix the section "Non-English Wikipedia entries on phreaking." The links aren't displaying properly. I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts on the revision, and any ideas for the future of this article.

--BriskWiki 10:57, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

BriskAttivo is love. Thanks Brisk, the article rules now.

And I thought this name would be semi-anonymous. :-)

--BriskWiki 13:34, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"nee" (English word) to "née" (French feminine form)

To Radman1: Please look up "nee" and "née" here in the Wikipedia before you change things again. "Nee" (which I used) is an English word referring to a former (or birth) name. You changed it to "née" which is French, not English, and is the feminine form anyway. Engressia is male. When I reverted your edit, you should have checked your facts before changing it again. I see that Fubar Obfusco has just removed the word entirely rather than watch us have an edit war, but it clearly belongs there, as Joybubbles isn't an alias. It's his actual new name. Please respond here or just put "nee" (English word) back in. I'll wait a few days to hear from you.

Interesting. The edit was meant to bypass the redirect, not a revert war -- it's now linked as nee, hope this works well for everyone. —RaD Man (talk) 14:31, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Néeither word is néeded héere. Using the Fréench is an afféectation, and an incorréect one if you use the féeminine. (Né would be correct, but snooty.) Making up a word "nee" and claiming it to be an Éenglish géender-néeutral word is just silly.

Moreover, the implication of using né (or any derivative form) is that the name thus marked is a birth name as opposed to a later legal name. (The traditional form refers to a woman's maiden name as opposed to her married name.) Internet handles and noms de crime need not apply.

Besides, the sentence reads better without it. --FOo 14:46, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Néever again! —RaD Man (talk) 14:49, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fubar Obfusco explained exactly why it should say "nee," but since he didn't read Engressia's article, he thought he was explaining why we don't need it. We need the "nee" here because this individual was born as "Joe Engressia" and legally changed his name to "Joybubbles." It's not a "handle" or "nom de crime"--it's a legal name and we're showing that "Joe Engressia" was his birth name, which is precisely what "nee" is for. Gary D Robson 17:35, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. "Nee" is an absurd made-up word. Use the perfectly good English word born: "Joybubbles (born Joseph Engressia)". --FOo 6 July 2005 03:07 (UTC)

"Nee" is a perfectly good English word. Pick up a dictionary, read a newspaper, or (ahem) check out Wikipedia. Née and né are French words, but nee has been in common English use for a long time. Gary D Robson 6 July 2005 22:09 (UTC)

Major Overhaul: Part Deux

There were some MAJOR factual errors that I fixed. Strom Carlson and I are going to try and beef up this article a bit and correct the mistakes. Black Ratchet 17:07, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Yay for Strom and BR! I love you both!

Captain Crunch

John Draper aka Captain Crunch is hardly mentioned in this article and when he is (about 2/3's of the way down) it is with NO context at all. Maybe some of the info. about him from his page should be moved here to give context to why he is an important figure in the phreaking world.

Freak vs. FREQuency

I changed the comment about FREQuency being a "more plausible" origin for the term "phreak". That's not really very plausible, but I did leave it in as an alternate explanation. I was an active phone phreak and knew many other phone phreaks, and the term "phreak" was simply a cute way to spell "freak". We were a bunch of freaks, freaking around with the phone system. That's where "phreak" came from, not FREQuency. For example, the black box, loopback numbers, and social engineering were all part of phone phreaking even though they had nothing to do with audio frequencies. Indeed, one could be a phone phreak and never deal with audio frequencies at all.

Michael Geary 08:36, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Popularity

In the late 1990s phreaking and computer hacking saw enormous growth as hobbies and a subculture with the growing popularity of the Internet. Is this for real? I would argue that it died out in the early/mid 1990s as telcos added tighter barriers and adopted digital circuits, while the proliferation of the Internet and VoiP gave phreakers better things to do. Maybe [b]hacking[/b] increased, but hacking != phreaking. -71.49.161.98 17:00, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Blueboxing was still possible out of the US right until *at least* late 90's, via home country directs to obscure third-world countries (Gautemala springs to mind for some reason). I do fully agree with the massive reduction in opportunity. Circa around 1994-1995, from my country, full international routing (C5 KP2) was available via at least two countries, limited outbound from at least three, all without routing codes. Direct inbound (C5 KP1) we could hit about another 4 or 5. Within a few years, the opportunities has massively diminished.--Afekz 16:14, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

newbie comment

i always new the alt.2600 news group was about phreaking but now know the significance of the 2600. Thanks for the article!