I've taken a cursory glance at phone phreaking, and I am having a hard time finding things that apply to today's US phone system. Are all the phone phreaking boxes obsolete? Every time I see anything on 2600 tone, it's followed by: "but the phone companies have updated their system to counter this..."

The same results come up after most of the phone phreaking boxes I've seen. While I haven't taken an in depth look at the subject, I'm wondering if it's all just history or something I can test today?

Even on phreaking sites, I mainly just see crude prank calls placed at random in motels and the like. Seemingly tasteless unless there's something to learn in my opinion. Any advice is appreciated! I'll continue my long reads in the meantime, searching for something to put into practice...

'eh a lot of phreaking is dead due to the digital age. Every so often you may be able to use an orange box, but it's rare to find such outdated equipment.

Myself, I have a couple lineman's buttsets laying around that'll always work as long as people use standard "from the telco" telephony

Then, with phreaking running scarce, do you think it'll pick back up now that some companies and individuals are switching to VOIP? And I read in "Steal This Computer Book 4.0" that some hackers actually tap into a business's phone system and set themselves up a mailbox.

Since many businesses don't want to deal with it, they turn a blind eye while others don't even know they're there. Is this phreaking still in use today, or has virtually all phone phreaking evolved into computer hacking?

Well the cool thing about these businesses that are getting owned are that they're actually using older tech for their voicemail systems.

as for phreaking, theres always hope, just depends on how things progress; theres a lot more to phreaking than just being mallitious, think of it as knowing the in's and out's of the telecom sytstem.

zero_deception

i recentley sent a mail to captin crunch the founder of the blue box there a while ago and he has told me that the digital services of viop skype and the likes of digital online communications have now beat out most of the phreaking scene but live here in the united kingdom i wouldnt know anything of the american phone system yet agian very little of my own but i was told that it has beacome almost obselette within the world of hpvc now from what it was back then in the early 80,s 90,s beacuse the telephone companys did not have the money to upgrade and the computer technology then to what it is now was not put into place due lack of money recorces but i would say that it is a handy trick to learn but skype ect has made things a lot easier for people now ????i know i know your dissapointed old skoolers are to they still try to keep things alive but if it hadnt ben for the phreaks really computer hacking into modems and boxing really there would not have been so many recorces on the telephone system and stuff they were they original like legion of doom lod on the net thy were phreaks to but it is dissapointing never the less

I think phreaking is alive and kicking hard...

Just the game switch a little bit, you got to mix butt set, voip asterisk, and credit card and some phone knowledge and you could make alot of money.

I know in the country I am, people do 300grand of telecomunication fraud in a weekend or week. Using 3PB and forwarding. Other people open fake post pay account on mobile and make long distance on it. Theres many ways of doing it, its all over the news over here, company getting it for millions. But the phreakers that are on the news sell the minutes either to calling card companys or have calling card themselve.

Its really alive when you talk about 10 mil of fraud montly over here.