Tonight, I was surprised to find that BoingBoing, one of my favorite sites, posted my submission about the audio recordings I made of “phone phreaking” (a.k.a., phone hacking) back when I was a troublemaking teen. The recordings are a snapshot of a seemingly by-gone age of hacker culture when it existed primarily in BBSes and compromised voice mail box systems. I kind of miss those days. My Apple //c’s 2400 baud modem was a speed demon!
Many, many thanks to Jason Scott of Textfiles.com and BBSDocumentary.com for his gracious support and efforts with hosting and cataloging my recordings. Be sure to visit his sites and see all of the wonderful work he has done to preserve computing history.
Update: I just wanted to post a pic of the type of recording device I used to obtain these recordings.
Prior to purchasing it, I spent a lot of time scribbling down on paper the codes and numbers I heard on the voice mail boxes. Some of the phreakers spoke too quickly, so I bought the recorder in an effort to keep up. It was crude but very effective.
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