2600 Flash
The Next Step in Custom Calling
Most Austin (Texas) telephone users who are harassed by obscene or threatening phone calls now have a way to trace those calls. Southwestern Bell is offering a "customer originated trace" service for most Austin customers as part of a test marketing of several advanced custom calling features. The program is called custom calling services plus and Austin is the first city hooked up to it by Southwestern Bell. Phone customers with numbers beginning with 4 or 8 - nearly 60 percent of all Austin customers - will have the service available. The following services will be offered:
- Customer Originated Call Tracing: Phone users can immediately dial a code to automatically trace harassing phone calls. Upon customer request, Southwestern Bell will notify law enforcement authorities of the traced phone number. Bell, however, will not divulge the identity of the obscene caller to the phone customer. Each tracing of a call will cost $5.
- Selective Call Rejection: Calls can be routed to a special recording to explain that calls will not be accepted at that time. Customers can also reject subsequent calls from whoever called last. It is not necessary to know the number. The cost is 25 cents to establish a "reject list" and 10 cents a day for maintaining.the list.
- Selective Call Forwarding: Incoming calls from three designated numbers can be sent to another remote telephone number. The cost is 10 cents for each time used.
- Automatic Re-Call: A customer can call back the last person who called or the last number the customer called. The cost is 20 cents for each use.
- Distinctive Ringing: Calls from three designated numbers will ring with a distinctive sound. The cost is 25 cents for each use and 10 cents a day.
"There's no need to sign up for anything," said Bob Dunbar, Austin division manager for Southwestern Bell. "You just pick up the phone and dial the right code for the feature you want to use. It's that simple."
Southwestern Bell will offer the services for one year in Austin to determine if they should be offered system-wide.
"If this service is made available throughout the country, it could be a major deterrent to obscene or threatening calls," Dunbar said. The custom calling system will trace obscene calls only if they originate from a phone in the service area. For more information give a call to 512-499-8010.
Industrial Espionage Seminar
Hackers and phone phreaks and what they can do to your computer and your business will be one of the features of the Industrial Espionage and Countermeasures seminar to be held in Florida April 25 and 26, 1985.
The objective of this seminar is to provide the participants with factual information in layman's terms so that they can evaluate their company's vulnerabilities and begin to develop protective systems to guard their data, proprietary information, and communications.
For more info, contact Jim Ross at 301-831-8400 or write to Ross Engineering Associates, Inc., 7906 Hope Valley Court, Adamstown, MD 21710.
Kenyan Payphones Prove Popular
In the first phase of a project to provide affordable telephone service to the masses of Kenya. 3,500 payphones are being installed throughout this Texas-sized nation.
Judging from the long lines that form at the pay booths, talking - lots of it - is very much in vogue. The scene played out on any day at the row of public phones outside Nairobi's main post office is repeated in the various nooks and crannies of this East African nation.
A caller coins and personal directory in hand occupies the booth. Three people patiently wait for their turn. The conversation grows longer: so does the line. Soon there are 6, 7, then 10 people standing in line, all casting querulous glances at the talkative offender. Some Kenyans have taken to calling this affliction "telephonitis."
Simon Gachoka was number 8 in line recently outside the post office on the wide thoroughfare of Kenyatta Avenue. Peering over the heads of the long-suffering others, he stared at the booth's occupant and then rolled bis eyes in exasperation.
"What is there to talk so long about?" he asked to no one in particular. "What is the romance with the telephone? I came to make a quick call and now the whole lunch hour is spent waiting for the end of a conversation that probably has no known significance."
This Month's Troublemakers
A Marquette (Michigan) man who authorities say devised and used a scheme to evade long-distance telephone fees has been charged with 148 counts of wire fraud. He made 112 call, by dialing 980, a number used by Michigan Bell employees to test equipment, and then "applying multi-frequency tones to the line to call whatever telephone number he wanted" states the indictment. By using the three-digit number, which "was not generally known" about by the company's customers, none of the calls were recorded on the billing computer.
The indictment also alleges that the man [identified to us as Flash Hoser, "the untraceable phreak of the Great White North"] made 28 long-distance calls that were fraudulently charged to Martin Marietta Corp., through the corporation's Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS) line at its Orlando, Florida aerospace division.
The indictment further accuses him of making eight calls that were charged to individual customers of LDX Corp., a St. Louis, Missouri company that sells long-distance phone service.
If convicted, the offender faces a maximum penalty of 740 years imprisonment and a $740,000 fine.
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Three teenagers have been charged with using home computers to make free long-distance telephone calls estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.
Police spokesmen said the youths, all from northwestern suburbs of Chicago, have been charged with theft of service - a felony - regarding the long-distance calls. They have also been charged with illegal use of a computer, called "hacking," a misdemeanor.
The teenagers range in age from 14 to 15. They probably will receive probation because none has a criminal record.
The phone companies might seek restitution from the youths' parents.
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The parents of "Echo Man," 16, "Three Rocks," 15, and "Uncle Sam," 17, probably thought they were in their rooms doing homework. Instead, the Burlingame, California teenagers were programming their Apples to scan the Sprint telephone-service computers for valid access numbers, which they used to make free calls. The hackers then posted the numbers on an electronic bulletin board, so others could share in the spoils. That was their undoing. Local police, who had been monitoring the bulletin board, raided each of the hackers' homes and found enough evidence to charge them with felony theft and wire fraud. But the police chose not to prosecute if the youngsters agreed to pay Sprint for the calls and write 10-page papers - on typewriters, no less - on the evils of computer hacking.
A Mechanical Hacker
When Clark Dill, director of sanitation for the City of Fayetteville, N.C., came to work one day recently, he found an intriguing little mystery on his hands: despite the fact that his department is locked and deserted each night, switchboard computer records showed that more than 100 telephone calls - most within seconds of each other - had been placed overnight from two telephone extensions.
Burglars? Electronic pranksters? Turns out it wasn't an intruder at all, but two Coca-Cola machines trying to phone home. Both had been equipped with computers to let the local distributor know when it was time for a refill. "The Coke machines were calling the computer at the Coke company and for some reason the computer just wouldn't answer," said Dill. "So the machines just kept calling and calling and calling."
Redemption for a Hacker
A 15-year-old boy who once broke into a bank's computer has eased his conscience by helping the police to crack a computer code that led to evidence sought in a child sex abuse investigation, the authorities say.
It took just 45 minutes to unravel what the police had puzzled over for nearly a month.
A police spokesman said the computerized accounts appear to be confessionals of sorts. But he said he did not know whether they would be useful as evidence.
IRS Computers Screw Up
A $100-million computer system that was supposed to speed the processing of federal income tax returns by the Internal Revenue Service has developed so many glitches that many taxpayers expecting refunds will have to wait about 10 days longer than last year for their checks.
IRS officials said there have been numerous breakdowns of the Sperry UNIVAC 1100-84 computer system since it was installed last fall in the IRS's ten regional processing centers. "Anytime you put a new system in, there are going to be problems" said Bob Hughes, director of the IRS's Holtsville (New York) service center. "They are not catastrophic in nature. But they are irritating as hell."
Hughes said, "I'm convinced we now have a solid system." Moments later, however, he was announcing yet another computer breakdown over the center's public-address system. "A few minutes ago, we lost part of the system but not the mainframe." he said.
Computel Does Exist
Computel, a new phreaker/hacker and technology oriented newsletter, has not folded according to John Reynolds, a Computel employee. Recently they have been receiving complaint, because of not publishing after a massive advertising campaign. Reynolds said that the first issue will soon be available. He blamed a broken printing press for the delay and a shortage of funds for the disconnecting of their toll-free number.