What's that sound?

Before it was hacking, it was phreaking. Phone phreaking was the term for the action and the people who hacked the phone system to make calls anywhere....everywhere. There were many possible ways into the old Ma Bell phone system. You could try to tie into someone's line using a lineman's phone or by using certain tones that resonated at 2600 Hz. in fact, during the sixties, a Captain Crunch cereal toy was given away and it just happened to resonate at that frequency. Later, boxes, called blue boxes, were made by many techies in the seventies and early eighties. Steve Jobs was one of those techies that made and sold them. Depending on what method you chose you could get through the phone system and discover new lines, numbers that shouldn't exist but did, and make calls for free.  Another common way, especially in the days of not caring about what happens to your trash, people would dumpster dive and pick up reams of info from phone companies or businesses.

The reason, I am writing about this is that Boing Boing had a post about a parody song about Phone Phreakers and I got all nostalgic. Give a listen and enjoy.