djc@chinet.UUCP (David J. Carpenter) (10/01/87)
A friend of mine told me an interesting story. Several students from the university which he attends took a trip to England and got homesick. So they called their home campus from an England payphone collect, to a payphone in the dormitory. The U.S. party gladly "accepted the charges" from the British operator, and they talked for two hours. Suddenly, the connection was broken, and a U.S. operator got on the line and asked "Who is this? Is this your personal phone? [Yes] Who is going to pay for this call? [I am, of course]. Well what is your name? [CLICK]". The college student got cold feet. Why was this possible in the first place? How did the local phone company finally after two hours figure out what was going on? Who is really going to pay for that call? -- ...!ihnp4!chinet!qpsn!david David Carpenter [home] (312) 545-8076 [work] (312) 787-9343
dave@westmark.UUCP (Dave Levenson) (10/21/87)
In article <1658@chinet.UUCP>, djc@chinet.UUCP (David J. Carpenter) writes: > A friend of mine told me an interesting story. Several students... > ..Who is really going to pay for that call? You are, I am, and the rest of the public who pays for their telephone service is, unless the toll carrier who was defrauded can determine who done it! -- Dave Levenson Westmark, Inc. A node for news. Warren, NJ USA {rutgers | clyde | mtune | ihnp4}!westmark!dave
roy%phri@UUNET.UU.NET (Roy Smith) (10/23/87)
When I was in high school, a friend of mine and I tried placing
collect calls to each other from (adjoining) phone booths just to see what
would happen. What happened was I dialed 0-xxx-xxxx, the operator came on,
I said "I'm calling collect", and then the line went dead.
I assume that operators are on standing orders to just ignore such
obvious prank calls and cut off the caller without bothering to argue.
--
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016konstan@ERNIE.BERKELEY.EDU (Joe Konstan) (10/24/87)
I remember another trick from my high school days, in NYC, which was since
fixed. Back then, the pay phones (which were still a dime) were adapted to
signal that money was dropped in using tones (2 for a dime, 5 for a quarter).
As some people discovered, the system allowed two very easy ways to make "free"
calls:
1) Dial long distance (if you want a local call, dial 1-212-telno)_ and wait
for the message asking for money.
2a) Pick up the next phone, put it's receiver to the voice piece of the first,
and deposit the money; then hang up the second phone and retrieve your cash.
2b) Record $XXX worth of "quarter droppings" on tape (this was when micro-
cassettes just became popular and cheap) and use that to "pay"
New York Tel wised up after about six months of this being popular and fixed the
phones (and probably fixed the basic flaw for future ones).
--
Joe Konstan
konstan@ernie.Berkeley.edu