» Mobile phone disasters

The correct (ab)use of technology.
Back in the day when vodafone was selling cheap phones on PAYG, my younger brother was a bit of a phreak (phone hacker) and managed to find the backdoor into everyones voice-mail (2222) - or rather the default. He spent a weekend listening to the messages ...

... not to be outdone, I worked out a rather nice scam

A friend of mine just bought a new phone, he came around for the usual sunday joint (we're NOT talking meat) and brew (NOT tea). Around 10pm, I said to him "have you registered it yet ?", "no", "You know they give you £15 for registering it - but being the weekend it should be automated ... try this ... ". Long story short, he registered it 3 times using thier automated system, and once again on Monday morning.

3 days later, he bangs on the door "I got over £60 in credit!". Great, so we set to work on using the credit for our fiendish amusement.

I had one of them "text to speech" programmes on my system, typed out a few amusing lines with appropriate pauses and told my friend "Right, dial up Max" ... he did. Phone to the speaker and in a male, american voice;

"Hi max",
"er hello",
"Remember me ?",
"Erm, no - who are you ?",
"I'm the guy who took you up the ass that night you was passed out, want to do it again sometime bigboy" ?

The phone went dead, and we all laughed ourselves stupid until we could repeat the process another 3 or so times using variations of voices.
(Wed 5th Aug 2009, 22:02, More)