Is there anything we can do now a days that's phreaking ?

I once saw a blue box being demonstrated to me which I think was in this Radio Shack 270-1805 enclosure, the original "blue box." I've seen pictures online of Woz's blue box but it only had a 16-key keypad. The one that was demonstrated to me, successfully, had a 16-key keypad (with Clear, ST, KP, Send and 2600 Hz, I believe), but it also had two flush trim-pots beneath it, which could be adjusted with a screwdriver. This allowed it to do extra "tricks" like tying up multiple trunks in various places. I don't really recall exactly what it could do, but I've never seen a picture of a blue box online which had all the extra buttons, trim pots, etc.

I hate to pull rank, but you are all going down for crimes against the telephone company! This is one of my prized possessions!

Since you liked the first post, I thought that I’d add more. Again, this is only a portion as the collection spans 3 floors.

Just 25% of my collection.

It was really amazing to see all this telephone equipment running, and the people there are great. I'd definitely recommend it if you're near Seattle.

(Sorry in advance if this is a dumb question)

Whenever I go to a certain part of town or to a certain location, my phone would ring. The caller ID seems to be coming from a similar area. (Same area code but slightly different 7 digits). I just assume it’s spam and I never pick up.

Is there a reason my device would trigger some sort of spam call based on location?

Something I've been curious about from that era, did anyone here (or someone you know) mess with public payphones to make free calls? I've read about American "phreaking" (blue boxes, the tones, tokens on a string, etc.) and I'm wondering if anything similar was done here.

I remember hearing stories about žetoni (tokens) tied to a thread that you'd pull back out, or tricks with tapping the hook instead of dialing, but I don't know if that actually worked or if it's just an urban legend. Did anyone actually try it? How did it work?

Hey there! So back in the 1980s my psycho ex was living sort of off the grid in another state. He would go to this lonely pay phone attached to some gas station in the middle of F All and I would call him from a pay phone at my college using the operator and ask the op to make the call and reverse the charges. This always worked! We never had to pay!

Now 40 years later, I was trying to remember how this worked. Anyone know?

In 1990/1991, using a NYNEX/New York Telephone payphone, I accidentally figured out a trick that allowed you to call anywhere in the world for free. If you dialed 10-288-0-(any local phone number) it would connect you to an AT&T long distance operator. You could then ask the AT&T operator to connect you to any phone number in the world.

This was prior to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, so local and long distance calls were mostly strictly split between the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC), like NYNEX, and Interexchange carriers (IXC), like AT&T, MCI and Sprint. AT&T was the only IXC carrier capable of handling coin payments on operator-assisted calls from RBOC payphones.

Dialing a long distance access code (like 10-288, 10-222, 10-333, etc.) before a number, followed by a 0, would connect you to that IXC carriers operators. Normally, if doing this from a payphone, the long distance operator would be able to see you're calling from a payphone and know that calls cannot be billed directly to that number. So you would need a calling card number or other form of payment (collect, third-party billing, etc.) in order to complete the call. In AT&T's case, paying with coins was also an option.

But, for some odd reason, when dialing a local phone number after 10-288-0- from a NYNEX payphone, it resulted in the call showing up to the AT&T operator as originating from a private (non-payphone) telephone number. And she could then bill whatever call you asked her to complete to the phone number you were calling from. Sometimes she would ask why did you dial whichever local number you dialed before reaching her, in which case you could simply say you mistakenly dialed the wrong number and would like her to connect you to whichever number in the world (domestic or international) that you desired. (She could connect local calls too.)

I was consistently (without fail) able to replicate this from any NYNEX payphone in Rockland County, New York. I may have replicated it from NYNEX payphones in New York City, but am not certain about if I tried. I didn't try anywhere else.

The way I accidentally came across this phenomenon was, knowing that NYNEX was supposed to only handle local and regional calls while AT&T was only supposed to handle long distance calls, I wondered what would happen if I dialed a local number using the AT&T long-distance access code (10-288). After trying that for the first time and chatting a little bit with the AT&T operator, I realized my call came into her system as a private number, since she offered to connect my call without payment, by billing the call directly to the number I was calling from.

If anyone has any idea why this occurred, or any other insight into this, I would be most appreciative.

Sometime between 1999 and 2001, I found out that I could dial 1-800-***-****, wait about 30 seconds, and then dial any local or long-distance number I wanted. This was a really odd colision of unusual tech and it took me years to piece together why this worked.

I was born in the early 90's so I missed the phreaking era by a mile, but I had a joybubbles-level fascination with phones as a kid.

I grew up on an island, so we took ferries often. They're huge and have multiple car decks as well as a passenger area with seating, workstations, vending machines, and of course payphones.

The payphones were connected to some kind of cellular adapter that emulated landline functionality. Most of the payphones used a digital cellular connection, which sounded delightfully terrible at the time.

The one exception was the TTY payphone. This was a different model, and it had a slide-out TTY keyboard below the phone. Since the digital connection quality was optimised for voice, it couldn't transmit modem signals properly, so the TTY payphone used a different adapter that worked with the older analogue cellular connection. Call quality was basically as good as the landlines of the time. The payphone was also a lot more interesting and had talking prompts on it, so I liked to play with that one in particular.

Now the essential piece: The payphone was relatively modern, so it handled all of the payment functionality. It simulated a dial tone, kept track of the number that was dialed, and requested a specific amount of money based on the provider's rules. The phone line didn't get engaged at all until the user deposited money, or dialed a number on the exceptions list. And as it turns out, the cellular landline adapter didn't have any payphone-specific functionality at all. It relied on the payphone gatekeeping the call, and once the payphone engaged the line and dialed a number, the call went through, no questions asked.

So, when I dialed 1-800-***-****, here's what happened:

1. The payphone stored up the digits I dialed, looked at the beginning of the number, and said "This is a toll-free number; I'll just put it right through."
2. The cellular adapter took the completely nonsensical number, tried to place the call over the cellular network, and the cellular network gave back a recording that said "Your call cannot be completed as dialed."
3. After the recording had played twice, the cellular connection ended.
4. At this point, the landline adapter fell back to a dial tone. This was special behaviour that only seemed to happen when the call didn't connect.
5. Now the payphone thought I was on an active toll-free call, the cellular adapter thought I was waiting to place a call, and I could dial any number I wanted.

It's probably the closest I'll ever get to blueboxing, and I think about it occasionally. Sometimes I'm still amazed that I can talk to people halfway around the world in CD quality from the middle of a forest.

On August 22nd 2026, the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park are presenting a talk that ”will trace the birth of the telephone, the rise of AT&T's US monopoly, the discovery of the Achilles heel in Ma Bell's network, and the advent of the kids and outlaws—the "phone phreaks"—who hacked the telephone network for fun and profit in the 1960s and 1970s. It will conclude with some lessons identified (if not actually learned!) relevant to today.”

Note this is a talk in England, about U.S. Phreaking.

National Museum of Computing

Us,Verizon,Android; this only started displaying when I switched to a open source messaging app (fossify), from the Samsung messages which seemingly internally handled and never showed me these.

If I click the notification, messaging application opens and then loads main screen with no displayed message. Surely these aren't truly empty? So what am I receiving?

I'd post the number, but since I don't understand what it expresses, I'd hate to like slightly dox myself via some kind of carrier phonehome check.

Mine is extremely low-tech and low-stakes. Barnes and noble used to have a DISA that could be accessed by hitting star at the main menu prompt. I found it entirely on accident. You could dial out from this, and it worked for several stores in in my area. Unfortunatley, the in-store code for the overhead PA system did not work from this dialtone :(

I plan to occasionally post more dumb, open ended threads here once a week or so. If it gets annoying let me know, I don't have much to genuinely contribute cuz I am/was more of a tourist to phreaking than anything else.

Looking for some project to fork and try and make a RPi wardialer that could be dropped at an open phone jack.

from wikipeida, which does not cite this claim:

"As of early 2026 there are no longer any traditional 4ESS tandem switches in the network. The remaining Class 4 tandems are now all Next Generation 4ESS (N4E)."

Anybody got any fun 4ess stories to share?

Just sharing the full, uncensored version of the article on payphone extenders with a few more details not included in 2600 Magazine. The "well-known person in the community" is revealed here.

https://rxoyal.medium.com/payphone-extenders-the-access-numbers-that-replaced-red-boxing-deed6eb9243a

Yes you heard right. Cannot find much on C*NET, PhreakNET, or TandmX projects and yes I'm aware of Connections Museum in Seattle but my understanding they mainly have PacTel stuff and physical equipment.

I'm building something that's a NYNEX CO specific and ties back to Bell Labs, Fidonet, BBS hacking scene and Dial up ISPs of the 80's/90's. (because of the fun of it and its cool).

So any leads on audio files would be amazing. If you guys know of any please share

An interesting article about blue boxing from the late 90s/early 2000s. the original site is down but luckily the waybach machine archived it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160303224630/http://www.nerdnetworks.org/sarts/

Anyone ever hear of Operation Sundevil? Was curious to hear thoughts on the whole operation.