Phone Losers of America
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| Phone Losers of America | |
|---|---|
 The PLA Logo |
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| Country | United States |
| Years active | 1994–present |
| Category | e-zine/phreaking/prank call |
| Founder(s) | RBCP |
| Product(s) | e-zine PLA Radio voice bridge Forums |
| Website(s) | http://www.phonelosers.org/ |
The Phone Losers of America (PLA) is an American phreaking group founded in the 1990s, whose knowledge, coupled with humor and general mischief, set it apart in the underground hacking scene. The PLA e-zine was first written in 1990, and the official web site went up in 1994. It is ranked at the top of Alexa's "Prank Call" category. [1]
Contents |
[edit] History
The Phone Losers of America has a history spanning more than 10 years. While the PLA didn't actually exist until 1994, the ideas and articles which were brought to the PLA began in 1992. By 1995, PLA became very well-known in the computer underground for their odd contributions to the text zine scene. Most hacker and phreak related bulletin board systems carried the series of PLA text files.
The PLA text files continued until mid-1997, when RBCP suddenly put an end to them. Though the text files ended, the PLA never slowed down. Their website continued to flourish, PLA TV was born, and several prank call CDs were released. The PLA community continued to grow on IRC and on the various PLA Forums. In 2002, RBCP began an internet radio station which he called PLA Radio which still exists today.
[edit] The e-zine
The PLA e-zine was originally distributed electronically via a dial-up BBS, with an option to buy the magazine and have it shipped by mail. It is not recommended that anyone follow any instructions in any article, since for the most part, the humorous antics (such as Phone fraud) are illegal.
Listed below are the six most read issues, along with short summaries. The author of the e-zine, Brad Carter, also goes by the aliases "RBCP" and "Alex", the latter being his middle name. He currently lives in Albany, Oregon with his two kids.
[edit] Issue #1: Hacking a WWIV BBS
The first issue is a parody of the common "how-to-hack" articles being distributed at that time. The humor in this article is that the word "hack" refers to an axe, and that the seemingly absurd methods to gain access to a WWIV BBS did not exceed the difficulty of actually breaking into such a system (although there are no files on how to break into the WWIV BBS).
[edit] Issue #2: Building Your Own Red Box
In the second issue, RBCP shows how one can modify a Radio Shack "tone dialer", originally meant to give rotary phones the ability to use DTMF ("Touch-Tone™"), to generate the correct frequencies to emulate a red box. From the first "red boxing" text file up to the early 1990's, the only way to make a red box was to wire one from scratch using circuit schematics. This incredibly simple hack allowed people with little or no knowledge in circuitry to manufacture their own toll fraud device.
Radio Shack has since discontinued the original tone dialer that was most used in the modification to red boxes, though many retailers still carry it.
[edit] Issue #3: Revenge
This issue frequently finds itself into Internet discussions in response to a person seeking revenge. The methods in this article are written with incredible detail, which include:
- Canceling a person's credit cards.
- Forwarding a person's phone number.
- Putting enticing yet fake For Sale/For Rent classifieds in the local newspaper.
- Reporting a person in response to "unknown suspects" listed in the police blotter.
- Rewiring a person's car to trigger the horn whenever the brakes are applied.
[edit] Issue #14: Cordless Phone Hell
The first "victim" of the PLA, Dino Allsman, is repeatedly harassed using a radio scanner and transmitter to interfere with his cordless phone. Most cordless telephones on the market today have some form of encryption mechanism to prevent people from doing what is done in this issue.
[edit] Issue #19: Fun with Call Forwarding
The telephone service known as Call Forwarding is explained in detail in this issue, along with methods of ordering it discreetly and passing the costs to someone else. Ways to set up a teleconference are also touched upon, along with ways to divert the costs to another phone line.
[edit] Issue #24: Dabbling in Credit Card Fraud
This issue describes how the author would go about getting credit card numbers, along with how to cover up one's tracks when committing credit card fraud. The author, however, was eventually caught and forced to pay restitution and serve a short jail sentence. To this day, though, people do refer to this issue, and the author has even gotten e-mails from Nigerian 419 scammers asking him for advice (and even credit card numbers).
[edit] Phone Mobbing
Phone mobbing is the act of having a large group of people continuously call the same phone number or group of phone numbers in an attempt to harass the called party.
Self-professed members of the PLA have targeted large media groups, including Loveline on MTV, where they prank called Jimmy Kimmel of Crank Yankers; and Hannity and Colmes on Fox News, where they yelled R-rated expletives to describe George W. Bush on a television station many believe has a conservative bias. [2]
[edit] PLA Radio
In early 2006, RBCP started releasing bi-weekly audio comedy shows called PLA Radio. The shows features comedy skits, commercials, parodies and lots of pranks. The show is released as a podcast and has been featured several times on iTunes and is regularly listed in the Top 10 on Podcast Alley. Some of the names used, like Chris Tomkinson and cactus, are inside jokes for the PLA's dedicated followers.
[edit] PLA Voice Bridge
The PLA hosts a voice bridge at +16416783404, extension 752. This bridge was previously hosted a +14133700333 on the same extension but the provider changed phone numbers. There are daily conferences from 8pm EST to 12am EST. The voice bridge is very active during this time which can be noticed, with many people talking and background noise such as soundboards, which many users frown on. The bridge is also a popular place for telephone relay service operators to gather. Occasionally, a user will create a "secret 800 number" which, when called, would forward to the voice bridge. This was usually accomplished by some method of theft of the toll-free 800 service, and was never officially sanctioned by PLA.
[edit] PLA Community Forums
The Phone Losers web site has always had some kind of forums on their website. In 1997 they used WebForums which were continually attacked by backers of the rival Boulder News Forums. In 1998 and 1999, RBCP used his own forum software in Perl, called FruitWare. These were closed in February 1999 due to abuse.
The site remained without forums for the next couple of years, but communicated with each other on the PLA Email List. In 2002, EvilCal took over by creating Cal's Forums which lasted until he shut them down in April of 2006, setting up Cal's Content Kingdom in it's place.
Today, the PLA community forums are administrated by RBCP, and were established on 03-21-2006. There are currently over 530 registered users, but only about 60 are active users, creating approximately 30 posts per day on topics mostly related to the PLA.
[edit] Tenth Anniversary
The PLA celebrated their 10th anniversary in 2004. While some of the textfiles show dates as early as 1991, RBCP claims the PLA as its current incarnation didn't fully exist until 1994. Several members of Cal's Forums put their heads together to find a way to celebrate the anniversary in a unique way. Rob Vincent aka Rob T Firefly, Judas Iscariot, Big-E, I-BaLL, and Murd0c headed up a panel at The Fifth H.O.P.E. conference.
The panel occurred July 9th, 2004 at 11pm and was seen by over 800 people in the audience and countless more via streaming media from 2600. Widely regarded as a success, the group played prank videos, held impromptu question and answer sessions, made live prank calls and nearly caused a riot when giving away free PLA Media CD's. All of the attention caused mentions in USA Today, Wired and The New York Post.
There were also problems when RBCP suggested that Cal (the webmaster of the PLA forums) was planning a hostile takeover of the PLA. Many agreed with this RBCP theory, and many expressed their support when he led a crusade against Cal. But some said RBCP had gone "off his rocker", and was making unfounded threats. The Phone Losers were divided until April of 2006, when it was announced that they would lay their differences aside and concentrate instead on pranking people and trying to find the "the original spark that united the PLA".
[edit] Cactus
A "Cactus" has become the PLA's mascot, as well as catchphrase. The orgin of the word dates back to an old prank call by RBCP, where he would say nothing but the word "cactus," over and over. In common usage, It can be stated with a question mark "Cactus?" or as an exlamation "Cactus!" Similar "Cactus" themed prank calls are often made by PLA mebmers.
[edit] United Phone Losers; a PLA Spin-Off
In 1998, Southern California phone phreak linear [sic] created a spin-off group of the PLA, and dubbed it the United Phone Losers. Though the group reportedly started as a joke, they picked up momentum when RBCP of the PLA recognized the UPL and asked them to take over the now-defunct PLA Telephone Director0y (later renamed the UPL/PLA Telephone Director0y), a comprehensive list of interesting and/or humorous telephone numbers.
The UPL had a popular message board forum and released 28 issues of its own ezine. The group remained active until 2002, when their activities started to dwindle down and production of their ezine ceased. They did continue to host their website, however, and actively maintained their message board and archived ezine and site content until 2004, when the website was "domain sniped" by cybersqautters. Reclaiming the domain was ultimately decided against due to the group members' declining interest in continuing the project and focus shifts to other projects and aspects of their lives.
In 2005, RBCP of the PLA compiled all 28 issues of the defunct UPL ezine and hosted them on the PLA website at http://www.phonelosers.org/upl, stating "So now the tables have turned - the PLA is stealing all of the UPL's material and putting it on their site. This page is a homeage [sic] to the old UPL site and is a complete archive of the UPL issues."
Shortly thereafter, RBCP released an "unauthorized" 29th issue of the United Phone Losers ezine, explaining what happened to the old UPL website as well as including previously unreleased material.
In 2006, the group reformed, and has now taken back control of the old domain, http://www.phonelosers.net. The group is asking for donations as it cost them "an obscene amount of money" to buy back.
[edit] External links
