From ptownson@eecs.nwu.edu Wed Dec 26 01:53:35 1990 Received: from hub.eecs.nwu.edu by gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU via TCP with SMTP id AA15943; Wed, 26 Dec 90 01:53:21 EST Date: Wed, 26 Dec 90 0:53:07 CST From: "Patrick A. Townson" To: ptownson@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: other lists for the archives Message-Id: <9012260053.aa18366@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> Status: RO 29-Feb-88 12:34:52-EST,37464;000000000001 Return-Path: Received: from ALMSA-1 (ALMSA-1.ARPA) by XX.LCS.MIT.EDU with TCP/SMTP; Mon 29 Feb 88 12:30:50-EST Received: from almsal by ALMSA-1.ARPA id a003362; 29 Feb 88 10:24 CST Date: Mon, 29 Feb 88 9:56:09 CST From: Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI To: telecom@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: Back traffic for Digests Maybe the enclosed will be of help to you. While the Telecom list was on hiatus, I had accumulated the following traffic related to Telecom topics from the Info-Modems list. I append it below. It may be that some of the traffic that was lost due to the missing Digests included items from this. There were several postings with the Subject: of "Enterprise Numbers" that I have deleted from this group before sending it, because I found them duplicated in Digest #30. Maybe the others were what was in the missing #s 29 and 31, 32? Anyway, here's the data: Regards, Will Martin ***Begin Telecom-related postings*** Date: 25 Dec 87 01:41:01 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Patrick_A_Townson@uunet.uu.net Organization: The Portal System (TM) Subject: Re: Sophisticated modems and Call Waiting Dave Levenson questions having two lines in the same hunt group when one is used for modeming -- My modems will auto answer, but generally I don't use that feature, and I usually leave it turned off via software. My configuration, which I think is ideal, works like this -- We only give out one number to persons calling. This number is mainly for voice. The second number is mainly for my outbound modem calls, and I never give the number to anyone except a person I am expecting to receive a modem call from. Both lines have call waiting, and the ability to suspend same (*70). When a call is in progress on line one and a second call arrives, call waiting will notify us. The second call can be brought in, and under Starline, switched to the second line by /flash/#2/announce/flash. I get the call on the second line, my roomate goes back to the call already in progress on line one. If we wish, implementing cancel call waiting on line one forces a second incoming call to to line two. If I am on the modem (i.e. cancel call waiting by default) then busy is returned to the second caller. If not, then line two rings and the call is answered. If on the other hand we each have a call on a line and a call comes in, it will be via call waiting (usually on line one) and it can be answered and retained on line one or transferred to line two, where again, it will trigger call waiting. It can be answered by whichever of us is on line two, and held or disposed of. If I am on a modem call (almost always outgoing), then *70 is defaulted into the dialing string...and an accidental wrong number, for example, which would otherwise ring line two and disturb me is shunted via hunt to line one.... Line one appears on single line instruments in the kitchen and my roomate's bedroom, and in the living room area. Line two appears on a single line phone in my bedroom and on the two modems (I will never be in both places at the same time). A Black Box swither allows either my Apple computer or my terminal to use either modem....and allows either modem to use the phone line, or allows the terminal to talk to the computer via null modem or to the printer, etc. Starline is an extremely flexible and powerful communications system from Illinois Bell. Not only can you physically switch calls between lines, you can answer any ringing line from any other free line; the lines function as an in-house intercom to each other (distinctive call waiting tones advise if it is an outside call waiting or an intercom call waiting); distinctive ringing advises if a call is from inside or outside; of course it includes three way calling on each line ; a 32 number speed dialing arrangement; call forwarding; no charge for intercom calling; automatic transfer to another line on busy or no answer after three rings; and more. I highly recommend it if you use your phones alot and share the phones with other people. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Date: 30 Dec 87 08:07:09 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Patrick_A_Townson@uunet.uu.net Organization: The Portal System (TM) Subject: Shocking Price For Starline! When STARLINE comes to your community, you will probably want to dump all your key equipment and go strictly with this neat centrex-like package. Here is a breakdown of what I pay for "Items of Service" each month to the Mother Company -- 1 Non-pub directory 1.45 (covers both lines - both non-pub) 1 Touchtone service .73 (first line) 1 Touchtone service .73 (second line) 1 Line charges 4.53 (first line) 1 Line charges 4.53 (second line) 1 Supplemental chge 2.00 (line one - courtesy of Judge Greene) 1 Supplemental chge 2.00 (line two - courtesy of Judge Greene) 1 Starline package 5.52 (line one - see details below) 1 Starline package 5.52 (line two - see details below) 30 number speed dial 5.00 system feature covering both lines 1 System call forwding 2.50 system feature covering both lines 1 system call-waiting 2.50 system feature covers both lines This totals out to $37.01 per month, of which $2.50 call waiting plus $2.50 call forwarding and $5.00 speed dialing would be charged anyway without Starline. What you get for the $5.52 per line/month with Starline is the following features -- You may have between 2 and 6 lines on the system. Each has its own number for receiving calls. Each line would cost $5.52. My two lines therefore cost about $11.00 Each line is an intercom to the others. Use #2 through #8 to signal desired line. Distintive ring identifies intercom (long single ring) versus incoming central office call (short double ring/pause/short double ring, etc). Answer an incoming call (intercom or central office) from the nearest phone by dialing *9. The call is immediatly transferred to your line. 30 number convenience dialing is a SYSTEM feature. Pay for it once ($5.00) but use it/program it from any phone on the system. Speed numbers are programmed like this: *75 SN xxx-xxxx where SN is the desired speed number (*20 through *49) and xxx is the local or long distance number to be associated. You will therefore save $5 per line after the first for each line you desire to have this feature otherwise. Three way calling is included. Just flash, dial the third party number, and flash again to reconnect. There is no charge for this SYSTEM feature, which means saving about $2.50 for whatever lines you would otherwise have it on. Unlike conventional three way calling where if you disconnect the parties you connected to also drop off, under Starline if you set up a three way call -- or transfer an incoming call out of the system -- the parties remain connected until [they] choose to disconnect. In effect you operate a mini-switchboard. To hold a call and take a call waiting (or intercom waiting), flash, dial *8 and the new call is online (if the call was camped on to you) or dial *8 then *9 to hold your party and pick up a ringing line elsewhere. Either tell the latest call to hold while you finish your first call or dispose of it. Flash and dial an intercom number (or an outside number) and when it answers, announce transfer and hang up. Phone will ring and party you left earlier on hold will return... or if you prefer, tell second call to hold, flash, dial *8 and [he] goes to the bottom of the stack and your first call pops up again. You can, as I said earlier, transfer an incoming call off net out of your system elsewhere if desired. Call waiting tones are distinctive; to advise if an intercom is waiting or a central office call is waiting so you can use an appropriate answer phrase. As long as someone is on hold on your line, flashing and dialing *8 will pop the stack and bring the one on hold back up and stash the other one on hold. You pay one call waiting charge to cover all lines ($2.50) and save the same amount you don't have to pay for the other lines. Any phone can be call-forwarded either to another phone in the system or off-net as desired. You pay one fee $2.50 which covers all lines. The protocol for forwarding is the usual one, except for forwarding to intercom lines an answer (or second dialing) is not required to confirm it. All central office calls will forward as instructed -- intercom calls will NOT forward, thus allowing you to shunt outside calls while retaining a line to others in the system. An additional feature included in the STARLINE package at no additional charge is called "Forward on Busy/No Answer". It's alot like hunt, except that it will also hunt automatically (if programmed at the central office) to another station in the system after three rings. This may sound like a moot point, and it is with only two stations as I have...but in a large house where you might not hear a phone ringing elsewhere, it is handy. Mine are set so that line one hunts to line two on busy or after three rings, and in reverse, line two to one under the same conditions. Since both lines have call waiting, the lines are never "truly busy" in the central office unless I have implemented "cancel call waiting" on one or both lines. Intercom calls are also subject to the Forward On Busy/No Answer provision. However, call forwarding takes precedence over this feature. That is, if line one is call-forwarded off net, as it sometimes is, an incoming call encountering a busy on line two will attempt to hunt line one and will go off net in the process....an unanswered call however will be just that...not answered on line two. Intercom calls are subject to the central office forward on busy/no answer but not subject to manual call forwarding. For all this, I pay (in addition to regular charges) $5.52 times 2 per month plus ONE SET of charges for "custom calling features". For me it nets out to an increase of about $5-6 per month. If I had 3-6 lines, it would be different. After the first two lines, the monthly STARLINE fee of $5.52 per line is just about covered by what custom calling charges would be. In actual practice, my TOTAL bill to Illinois Bell is about $150 per month. Besides the $37 or so in fees, I go through about 2000-2500 message units per month at 4 - 5.5 cents each. I pay $11.10 for Bonus Reach Out Plans, and $50-60 in long distance charges. Here we also pay about fifty cents each time we deign to ask the Directory Enquiry anything at all, and they also hit you up good for calls to 976 and/or the "900 Service Corporation" a/k/a horoscopes, dial-smut, and chat with eight others at once. Oh yeah....our apartment building also has "Enterphone Service"; a lobby/front door to apartment intercom which works on the regular phone line. The building pays for this. A caller at the front door uses the lobby phone to call the apartment and announce himself...we dial "4" to unlatch the front door. If not for my STARLINE, "Enterphone" functions alot the same way; distinctive ringing or call waiting tones mean a front door caller; you answer or not as desired. The front door caller only sees an intercom code which does not relate to a specific apartment number; and he does NOT see or find out your non-published number. Since I have STARLINE, the intercom ring and ENTERPHONE ring come out the same... Enterphone is offered by Illinois Bell. A sturdy outdoor type phone is mounted at the front door; a pair runs to dedicated equipment in the central office; a pair runs back to a transformer which in turn buzzes or unlocks the door. The pairs to our building from the central office of necessity are dedicated since they have to serve not only our phones but Enterphone as well. If you move in this building and do NOT have phone service, a phone plugged in a jack will still work with Enterphone. The building pays Bell $100 per month for the common equipment and $1.10 per month per apartment intercom phone. Finally -- There is no charge for intercom station to station type calls and there is no charge for Enterphone calls. Enterphone calls are automatically timed out after one minute which is plenty of time to answer the door and take a message or admit the person, etc. I use an old Apple 2+ computer with a clock program to wake my brother each day. I set it to make an outdial call at 8 AM, to dial *2, the intercom number in his bedroom. It dials and sends alternating answer/originate carrier noises at him (wee hah! wee hah! wakeup! wakeup!) The answering machine is based on line one, but answers line two after five (transparent to the user) rings since on the fourth ring the call has hunted over to line one, and two rings later the machine picks up. Enterphone on the other hand overrides all STARLINE features and sticks to line one, allowing the answering machine to answer the front door when we are out. I think I have a very powerful and flexible phone package! Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Date: 30 Dec 87 08:25:56 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Patrick_A_Townson@uunet.uu.net Organization: The Portal System (TM) Subject: Digital ESS: For The Birds By the by, if your telco someday announces they are switching to digital ESS, politely hold up your middle finger and invite them enjoy themselves with it.... Most unreliable...that's the only way I can describe it.....two central offices here, Chicago-Kildare and Chicago-Irving both cut to digital ESS a few weeks ago.... They've both gone down about five times! I swear if they reboot the thing once a day they do it five times a day.... I am out of Chicago-Edgewater, an "old fashioned" ESS, but our TSPS operators work out of Irving office; I was talking to a buddy with an Irving number, the line went dead; I couldn't raise anything there for five minutes, tried to get the operator, could not raise him either...finally I did get an operator, asked, "did you go down again"...he sort of giggled, said yes, the second time this week.... tell your telco NO digital until its de-bugged! ------------------------------ Date: 31 Dec 87 01:01:52 GMT From: tramp!graefe@boulder.colorado.edu (GRAESE WILLIAM S) Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder Subject: Re: Digital ESS: For The Birds In article <2214@cup.portal.com> Patrick_A_Townson@cup.portal.com writes: =They've both gone down about five times! I swear if they reboot the thing =once a day they do it five times a day.... We at C U Boulder just got a new AT&T Campus 200 phone system installed a year and a half ago. Since then I know of 2 crashes, and I will BET there have been more. Actually there are several handy features with the system. It is an ISDN- alike with features like auto call back (rings you when extension is free) as well as 9600 FDX on the 'B' jack, and it supports at least two exchanges (not fully). Not bad, albeit the down time. (BTW, It cost $10.4 million to install!) !---------graefe@tramp.Colorado.EDU------------------------! ,---. ! ! Bill |(insert something terribly witty, humorous, )! | _ _ ! ! GraeFe, Jr.|(and inspiring in this space: )! `-+-' | ! !---------{sunybcs, hao}!boulder!tramp!graefe--------------! `---' ! ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jan 88 07:05:48 GMT From: mtune!icus!gil@rutgers.edu (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) Subject: Digital ESS: For The Birds Although it IS indeed annoying when the phone system screws-up and leaves you hanging, there is much good to say about the new digital ESS... In the Bay Shore/Islip area of Long Island, NY, our telco changed the CO to digital about a year ago. For the first 3-6 weeks, there were unusual telephone outages which got annoying. After 6-8 weeks, all the bugs were basically out and the system has worked like a champ! Better yet, I used to attempt 300 (yes, 300) baud connections to where I work, 35 miles away. The old switching systems introduced so much noise I couldn't use my modem at all for this. After the change to digital, this problem went away, and I can work up to 2400 baud with no problems. Try to bear with the problems, as much of a pain as they are. You will eventually reap the benefits of the enhancements. Gil Kloepfer, Jr. USENET: ...icus!gil ICUS Computer Group, Systems Development P.O. Box 1 Islip Terrace, New York 11752 ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jan 88 22:39:45 GMT From: decvax!ima!johnl@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (John R. Levine) Organization: Not enough to make any difference Subject: Re: Enterprise Numbers and other funny phone numbers In article <2257@cup.portal.com> Patrick_A_Townson@cup.portal.com writes: >OTHER MORE OR LESS STANDARDIZED PHONE NUMBERS IN THE 1930'S - 1950'S: >... >Coin phones always began with a 9, as in 9xxx. This was universally >recognized ... Well, not quite universally. My phone number is -9650 and as far as I can tell hasn't been changed since the house got dial service, other than changing the prefix from UNIversity to the equivalent 864. (I'm not that old, but the number came with the house.) I note that -9649 is indeed a payphone in a nearby bar. -9950 used to be the local business office, causing a certain number of strange calls. My understanding is that they put special relays on pay phone lines that bounced when they connected, making a distinctive ticky-ticky sound that the operator could recognize. For that matter, when you make a toll call from a payphone, how does the long distance company know that it's a payphone? Special trunks? Special bits in ANI messages? Only AT&T does anything interesting with direct dialed calls from payphones, but the other LD companies at least know to block them. John Levine, ima!johnl -- John R. Levine, IECC, PO Box 349, Cambridge MA 02238-0349, +1 617 492 3869 { ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something Gary Hart for President -- Let's win one for the zipper. ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jan 88 05:32:22 GMT From: ptsfa!perl@ames.arpa (R. Perlman) Organization: Pacific Bell Marketing Subject: Re: Enterprise Numbers and other funny phone numbers In article <838@ima.ISC.COM> johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) writes: >In article <2257@cup.portal.com> Patrick_A_Townson@cup.portal.com writes: >>OTHER MORE OR LESS STANDARDIZED PHONE NUMBERS IN THE 1930'S - 1950'S: >>... >>Coin phones always began with a 9, as in 9xxx. This was universally >>recognized ... > >Well, not quite universally. My phone number is -9650 and as far as I can tell >hasn't been changed since the house got dial service, other than changing the >prefix from UNIversity to the equivalent 864. Actually you are both right! In step-by-step offices the 4 and 9 levels were ofter tied together when all line thousands groups were'nt needed. A non-coin would be assigned the number -4xxx and a coin -9xxx, in fact it didn't matter whether you dialed a 4 or nine, you get the same number. BTW, Operators have listings by area code showing all the NNXs (actualy NXXs) that have coin stations. Usually only 1 code per CO has coin lines. If a number (for 3rd number or collect calling) is a -9xxx & is in a coin NNX then the Operator checks with Rate & Route for a "coin check" to see if the number is indeed a coin box. -- "there's no success like failure and failure's no success at all" Bob Dylan Richard Perlman 1E300 2600 Camino Ramon, San Ramon, CA 94583 (415) 823-1398 uucp {ames,pyramid,ihnp4,lll-crg,dual}!ptsfa!perl || ceo rdperlman:8 ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jan 88 16:59:14 GMT From: codas!ablnc!maxwell@bikini.cis.ufl.edu (Robert Maxwell) Organization: AT&T, Maitland, Florida Subject: Re: Enterprise Numbers and other funny phone numbers > >Coin phones always began with a 9, as in 9xxx. This was universally > >recognized ... > Well, not quite universally. Back in the days before the TSPS operator positions, the operators had an indexed list at their positions that they used for identifying area codes that listed almost every city or exchange in the USA. One of items also listed in this index was the pay phone number series in any exchange that used a special group of numbers. It has been a few years since I last saw one, but I do remember the numbers for pay phones could be anything from an exchange + 1 digit (ie: 321-9) to a group of numbers (ie: 321-7800 to 321-8299). As I remember the instructions with the list, this was a group to be checked for possible pay phone, not necessarily an absolute list. I don't consider myself very old, but I can remember when the phones were so automatic, you didn't have to turn a dial or push buttons, you would just speak the number you wanted into the mouthpiece and the connection would be made. :-) > For that matter, when you make a toll call from a payphone, how does the long > distance company know that it's a payphone? Special trunks? Special bits in > ANI messages? Only AT&T does anything interesting with direct dialed calls > from payphones, but the other LD companies at least know to block them. With ESS offices, the programming takes care of handling special needs for a given line. It is reasonably simple to prevent charging LD calls to a given line, no matter which company you use for LD. The same basic technique that gives you 1+ dialing to your LD company can control how the calls are accepted from a pay phone. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bob Maxwell AT&T DP&CT | All standard (and most non_standard) Maitland, FL ihnp4!ablnc!maxwell | disclaimers apply. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jan 88 06:43:03 GMT From: imagen!atari!portal!cup.portal.com!Patrick_A_Townson@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Organization: The Portal System (TM) Subject: Re: Enterprise Numbers and other funny phone numbers Perlman points out a method of detecting coin service which is correct. If in fact the receiving number is coin; and if the caller insists on making the call collect, and provided some fool on the receiving end agrees to accept the collect call then he has to deposit the money as if he were making the call. The only problem is, the distant operator cannot supervise the collection properly. The operator tells called party to hang up and wait a minute....she calls inward in the city in particular, and asks for assistance from a local operator in manipulating the coin collection table; assistance in dumping the coins in the box, collecting for overtime, etc. The local operator calls the coin box, gets the money and connects the parties. Does anyone on here remember when coin phones had on the top for nickles, dimes and quarters AND had no trap door on the coin return AND had regular -- not armored -- cable to the handset? As little kids we rarely paid for calls. We either applied ground to the line through a tiny pin hole in the handset cord (which we put there, of course) or we used a coat hanger bent in a funny way which we stuck up the coin return. We would deposit the money which fell on the table inside. The process was the operator would apply the tip and ring one way to throw the table and toss the money in the box or would apply it in reverse to throw the table in the direction of the return slot, to give the money back if there was no answer, etc. To make long distance calls, we would use the same quarter(s) over and over. The operator would ask for two dollars -- in would go two or three quarters (clung clung clung)...."just a minute operator, I am looking for more change!..."and that coat hanger would go up the return slot and trip the table, sending our quarters down the chute and back to us.... "Ok operator, here is the rest of the money...." and if we were fast enough, or the operator was not suspicious, the coat hanger could be used to retrieve the three quarters ...some operators immediatly collected when there was an answer, especially if they suspected hanky panky on the other end...some would not wait for the full collection, but grab the coins as they came in, hitting that ring key over and over knowing the brat-child on the other end of the line had been thwarted in the process.... Some of the older exchanges in downtown Chicago years ago had to have the assistance of a special "trunk operator" to return the money if a call was not complete. Your operator would give up on completing the call and tell you to hold on...after a few seconds and a click, someone would answer "Wabash trunking"....and your operator would say something like "return on circuit 5096"....and the phone would clatter and your coins would fall back out to you. And there was also (downtown) the Franklin Coin Central Office which handled nothing but pay phones in the 1940's-1950's. Patrick T. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jan 88 06:20:59 GMT From: imagen!atari!portal!cup.portal.com!Patrick_A_Townson@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Organization: The Portal System (TM) Subject: Re: Enterprise Numbers and other funny phone numbers John R. Levine asks about pay phones -- 1) He notes, correctly, that some exchanges did/still do have private phones beginning with 9xxx. Its not too common, but happens. Here in Chicago, one exchange for many years, "LOngbeach 1" (now 561) had private residence numbers beginning that way. 2) How, John asks, do the OCC's detect calls from payphones (presumably, in order to collect money)? They don't. In the case of XXX-Bell payphones, they all default to AT&T for long distance. The use of the 10xxx codes from payphones doesn't work, at least in Chicago. The OCC's use the "950-xxxx" numbers for that purpose. Generally, the "950" version is the same as the "10xxx" version. That is, MCI is 10222; they are also 950-1022 here. Sprint is 10777 and 950-1077, etc. The use of the 950 numbers requires an authorization or travel code number from the OCC. You may use the 950 number from a private phone if you wish to override the billing; however the 10xxx version will simply override the default carrier assigned to the phone while still causing the billing to go to the phone being used. Privately owned payphones must be programmed by their proprietors to allow or toll restrict as desired. Typically, the private pay phones in Chicago offer transparent calling to the user. You enter the desired long distance number, the circuitry in the private pay phone detirmines a routing and a cost; demands the money and dials out on the carrier programmed by the proprietor. Most private payphones are NOT in the 9xxx number series; but under ESS, the nature of the phone is known to a TSPS operator should the user attempt to zero-plus a person to person call and attempt to bill the private coin phone line. The operator will catch this, and decline the charge. calls to a private pay phone generally fail: most private payphones here do NOT have their number printed on them; leaving the user in the dark about what number to dial. Should the number be dialed, most will not ring in the phone itself; will wait at least 10-12 rings before answering, and then will emit carrier, since private pay phones are programmable both from the tone pad itself as well as remotely by someone using a PC. I am reluctant go get into a discussion right here on the net about hacking private pay phones...it be done, and people sitting cozily at home at their PC, programming private pay phones about town to accept a nickle as the rate for long distance calls to Alaska is one reason most have had their number changed to non-pub and the notation removed from the number plate on the front of the phone. Some private pay phones will wait 10-12 rings and answer with a synthesized voice saying, "Operator! Operator! This is a pay phone! No charges allowed!" I think all xxx-Bell payphones nationally default to AT&T as part of the breakup. Am I right? Finally, there is another oddity about the OCC's and the 10-xxx numbers here. If you dial 10xxx-1-acc-ppp-nnnn the call will complete via the OCC and be billed to the line being used. If you dial 10xxx then PAUSE AND WAIT, the OCC dial tone will be extended, and you must enter the desired long distance number an authorization code in the protocol required by the OCC. Dialing 10xxx from an xxx-Bell payphone usually gets a recorded intercept saying "....the carrier access code you have dialed cannot be reached from this phone...". Even 10ATT won't work. By the way, did you know MCI will not complete calls to 976? They have never been able to reach an agreement with PacBell (and a few others) on who should be billed for those special service calls; and they say they have no way to bill their users at present. Ever wonder WHAT carrier was the default carrier for the phone you were using? Dial 1-700-555-1212 and listen to the recorded announcement tell you....(valid in Chicago,312 -- I assume it works elsewhere). {To force the announcement from each carrier, dial 10xxx-1-700-555-1212. You should get messages welcoming you to MCI; telling you that with Sprint you made the right choice, etc. Patrick T. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jan 88 07:18:12 GMT From: imagen!atari!portal!cup.portal.com!Patrick_A_Townson@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Organization: The Portal System (TM) Subject: Re: Enterprise Numbers and other funny phone numbers Levine notes a time when ..."phones were so automatic you did not have to push buttons or twirl a dial; just speak into a mouthpiece and the call would be connected...." Ah yes....and frankly, the old manual service [was as fast, or faster] than dial service. Hard to believe perhaps, but true, at least in those days, but I'll grant you it would be slower now, if not impossible. The operators were trained to grab a cord and have it already in the plug going to the desired central office before you completed what you were saying...so that if you ask for (my parent's number) Rogers Park 3714, by the time you said "Rogers Park" the operator was already up on that strip. By the time you said "3714" she was on the line waiting for Rogers Park central to answer. There would be just a click and she would repeat, "3714", then a second or two later (to you) "thank you"...and be gone. The fun came in the long distance (pre area code, pre dialing) calls. You would ask your operator for "Long Lines" and she would plug in there and wait; then pass your number to the long lines operator and leave. You want to call California...let's say Hollywood.... The Chicago operator would get on a trunk to St. Louis...after a few seconds (usually), a distant voice would yell in the phone, "St. Louis!" and your operator would say, "St. Louis, give me Kansas City...", and in moments another voice would answer, "Kansas City"...and your operator would ask to be extended to Denver, etc...finally you'd reach Los Angeles, then a local operator in Hollywood, where if you were calling the MGM studios, the general offices phone number was Hollywood 1000. The switchboard operator at MGM would connect you with your party....you would talk all of about thirty seconds and Praise The Lord!...the line would go dead. Furious, you would flash your hook...your local operator would answer...you'd say, "Operator! ##@@%&&!! You disconnected me!" and she would say, "Oh no...I did not. You are still up here..." and she would vigorously raise Long Lines and say, "Operator! You cut my party!"...and Long Lines would say, "oh no I didn't...you are still up here...." and she would raise St. Louis and bawl her out...and on it would go...."Denver, what are you doing? You cut Chicago off!".... and finally the poor operator at the MGM switchboard would have them all blame ... And not once would any operator along the line ever admit to being the guilty party...all insisted "party is still up here.." as if the whole thing, all these human tandems just came apart like magic... And then like now, no matter who or what was actually at fault, your local operator got the cussing out and the sins of the telephone company heaped on her/him. Mostly to placate the operators, who in the 1920's were still not unionized, but growing more militant all the time, the alphabetical directory of the Chicago Telephone Company (predecessor to Illinois Bell) printed an Admonition to Subscribers on the front cover of the June, 1921 edition: "We request that our subscribers use the same courteous language and phrases to our operators that they would want to hear from the operators in response...." My great aunt Myrtle was the first union steward here in Chicago. At that time, the other operators used to laugh at her: "You'll never organize the Bell....why even try?" But she organized "the Bell" alright, and when the union first began active recruitment of the operators, the others would shun my great aunt; they were frightened for their jobs and they had been warned by their supervisor to have no part of it. In those days, there were no federal laws against company interference with union activities, and Bell tried hard to bust it up before it grew "worse"... but that's a subject that could fill several more posts another time. Patrick T. ------------------------------ From: "Roger Fajman" Date: Fri, 15 Jan 88 12:35:57 EST > John R. Levine asks about pay phones -- > 1) He notes, correctly, that some exchanges did/still do have private phones > beginning with 9xxx. Its not too common, but happens. Here in Chicago, one > exchange for many years, "LOngbeach 1" (now 561) had private residence numbers > beginning that way. My newly-assigned home phone number here in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC (served by C&P Telephone, part of Bell Atlantic) is in the 9xxx series. I suspect that the shortage of exchanges in some areas is forcing the phone companies to give up such conventions. ------------------------------ Date: 9 Feb 88 06:34:10 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Patrick_A_Townson@uunet.uu.net Organization: The Portal System (TM) Subject: Re: Disabling Call-Waiting on a Per-Call basis in Metro DC? Regards the disable call waiting situation in Washington, DC, it may well be the set up there does not allow it. The standard is *70 if you have a twelve button touch tone phone. If you have rotary dial or a ten button touch tone, then use "1170". If these do not work, then I suggest your particular exchange on the C&P system does not have the feature...some early ESS machines never had that feature installed. Example: Here in Chicago it is available everywhere...the Morton Grove central office however cannot disable call waiting. And the guys out there with modems really bitch about it...their only options are a second actual line (and dropping call waiting) or the use of call forwarding. I cannot imagine why C&P would not tell you if they had it. Here, Illinois Bell uses that as a selling point to show how flexible the system is. ------------------------------- Date: 10 Feb 88 01:24:47 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!David_W_Tamkin@uunet.uu.net Organization: The Portal System (TM) Subject: Re: Disabling Call-Waiting on a Per-Call basis in Metro DC? According to DC-area residents whom I know from People/Link, C&P does NOT offer the disabling of call waiting now. Customers who also have call forwarding can get around it by forwarding calls to a number that will be busy or won't answer, but you have to remember to shut call forwarding off when you are done (disabling call waiting automatically resets when you hang up). In some areas the threeway-calling trick doesn't work either (it goes like this: if you have threeway calling but cannot disable call waiting, start by phoning something that is busy or won't answer; then flash the switchhook as if to start a threeway call, and dial the data connection; then do NOT flash the switchhook the second time as you normally would for a threeway conversation -- that ties up both halves of your line and gives incoming calls a busy signal, but in some areas the blip of call waiting comes right through during the use of threeway calling). When I moved here in September, 1987, and started service with Central Telephone of Illinois, CenTel told me that disabling call waiting would be available in roughly sixty days. They have made no announcement but I haven't asked either. D.W.T. ------------------------------- ***End of forwarded traffic*** 29-Feb-88 12:37:43-EST,29524;000000000001 Return-Path: Received: from ALMSA-1 (ALMSA-1.ARPA) by XX.LCS.MIT.EDU with TCP/SMTP; Mon 29 Feb 88 12:35:04-EST Received: from almsal by ALMSA-1.ARPA id ac03362; 29 Feb 88 10:26 CST Date: Mon, 29 Feb 88 10:03:05 CST From: Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI To: telecom@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: Telecom-related traffic from Security Here is a collection of Telecom-related traffic that I've gleaned from the Security list archives. I thought it would be worthwhile to send it in to Telecom so it would get into that list's archives for future reference. Regards, Will Martin Subject: Telephone-tapping from Security ------------ Date: Fri, 4 Sep 87 15:54:33 CDT From: paul@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (Paul Pomes - The Wonder Llama) Subject: Telephone tapping via the isolation box It occurred to me, while watching the telco man install my data line, that the network isolation box provides very easy access to a line tapper. A line powered FM transmitter with a RJ11 plug and socket at each end would take less than two minutes to install start to finish. These thoughts have prompted me to install a locked cover over the box. -pbp ------------ From: kludge@pyr.gatech.edu (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Telephone tapping via the isolation box Date: 25 Sep 87 20:14:03 GMT It takes a lot less time than that. Even more fun... take a look at your supply closets and broom closets at work (and maybe the bathrooms). You'll probably find banks of #66 punchdown blocks with each line carefully labelled on them. Not only can someone walk in and make free phone calls, but dropping a tap in is simple. Keep the phone cabinets locked, and remember that the phone is never very secure in the first place. -- Scott Dorsey Kaptain_Kludge Internet: kludge@pyr.gatech.edu ------------ From: mlinar%poisson.usc.edu@oberon.usc.edu (Mitch Mlinar) Subject: Re: Telephone tapping via the isolation box Date: 25 Sep 87 19:57:32 GMT >These thoughts have prompted me to install a locked cover over the box. That is hardly worthwhile. What you have done MAY stop a true amateur, but wire tapping can be cleanly done anywhere along your phone line. There are some interesting gadgets I saw at a convention which clamp onto any phone line (outside or inside your house) WITHOUT need of a physical contact to the wire itself and filter out the background clutter to send a clean FM signal up to 1/4 mile away. (This was a closed convention in '84 for security types only; I happened to be consulting as a computer expert and needed to find products that were amenable to computer monitoring.) By the way, the price for this goody at the time was around $350 - cheap by most standards - and could be installed in 15 seconds. The receiver (a bit more pricey) could even filter out multiple signals (if it was clamped over two lines instead of one), but required some manual work to keep it focused if both lines were in use. A more interesting gadget was an HP spectrum analyzer which was tied to a computer and display as well as a nice IF antenna. You got it. ANYTHING typed on the IBM-PC about 100ft away (for effect) appeared on the monitoring display. (Whoever said that emissions for PCs was small!) The antenna was directional, and for "kicks", the demonstrator turned it towards another known PC in the auditorium. We watched every character that the person at the Vivitar security booth typed in! I don't mean to pick on you, Paul, but the state-of-the-art is well beyond your deterent. Unless you reinstall your phone lines with two ground coax (all the way to the telephone pole) and get your PC TEMPEST equipped, the lock cover is about as effective as dead-bolting your doors while leaving the windows open... -Mitch ------------ From: sunybcs!kitty!larry@rutgers.edu Date: Sat, 26 Sep 87 10:45:17 EDT Subject: Re: Telephone tapping via the isolation box > These thoughts have prompted me to install a locked cover over the box. And what, pray tell, do you plan to do about all of the unlocked, outside cable terminal boxes between your building and the telephone company central office? <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York <> UUCP: {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rutgers|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry ------------ Date: Sat, 26 Sep 87 20:25 CDT From: Mike Linnig Subject: RE: Telephone tapping via the isolation box There are multiple places that your line COULD be tapped. If I was going to do it for short amount of time I'd go up the road from your house and tie in at one of those telephone junction boxes. The telephone person would spot it in a second, but it would be good for a week or so on the average. The real problem with that technique is that you would have to figure out which line is yours. But if you were a mafia Don, at least I don't have to walk up to your house (grin). Mike Linnig ------------ Date: Tue, 29 Sep 87 09:40:09 edt From: mason@oberon.lcs.mit.edu (Nark Mason) Subject: Re: Telephone tapping via the isolation box Don't worry, your phone lines still are not safe. Many years ago (when I was young and irresponsible...) I amused myself a few times by sitting in the bushes near my house at a unlocked telco junction box looking for a friends data line. Didn't find it, but I did hear some interesting stuff and caught a guy trying to break into a nearby church (I wouldn't tell the police where I was phoning from). Failing this I went to his house, clipped my handset into the wires outside his house and plugged a tape recorder in. In a relatively large city like Newton the CO's (Company Offices?) were manned 24 hours a day, in smaller citied they aren't and noone's too concerned with keeping people out of them. ------------ Date: Sun, 4 Oct 87 14:40:10 EDT From: bzs@bu-cs.bu.edu (Barry Shein) Subject: Telephone tapping via the isolation box >That is hardly worthwhile. What you have done MAY stop a true amateur, but >wire tapping can be cleanly done anywhere along your phone line. Waitaminute, do we have a case of security-macho here? Maybe he's only trying to protect against the "true amateur"? Remember, the only person that's going to bug his phone is a person with a motivation to do so. More often than not that will be someone w/in the organization who isn't going to expend the resources to hire a pro, but if a pair of alligator clips will do the job, what the hell, right? Years ago I had an office which had a wire-closet for a good portion of the building behind the door. I got curious and began playing with a pair of alligator clips and found a phone line which appeared to be unused. This was useful because my phone line could not dial off-campus while the discovered one could (not long-distance, that took an access code, but even up the corner for a pizza.) [standard disclaimer: this of course was on another planet where such things are encouraged.] If someone had simply put a locked box over it I'm sure I would have never bothered to investigate (unless it was such a dumb lock...but that's a different story.) Let's not make the best the enemy of the good. -Barry Shein, Boston University ------------ Date: Mon, 05 Oct 87 15:40:17 IST From: "Robert (Al) Hartshorn" Subject: Re: Telephone tapping via the isolation box Just a short note. I retired from the US Army (MI). I inspected sites for security problems (TEMPEST). Just to let you know, there is so meany ways to monitor your PC. We could monitor your phone line at the house, at the pole, at a transmitting site, or even monitor your power lines. There are more ways to do it then one would normaly think about, and alot of the things that one would need can be gotten localy. If you have information that you don't want anyone else to see, filter your power line, put a ground screen on all four walls, floor and ceiling. Ground your PC to a ground point that you can only get to from inside the room, and now place your PC in a sheilded box, with you only access toward the largest mass of your house. This will do for a start. This may sound like a joke, but this is just some of what you would have to do. To me, it sound like to much work and I just don't have anything that I want to prevent anyone from getting so bad. But to secure your phone connection box is not a bad idea for other reasons. You can never tell when someone may connect to it and make a call. Have fun, and don't let this go to your head. Al ------------ Date: Sat, 10 Oct 87 20:39:13 CDT From: paul@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (Paul Pomes - The Wonder Llama) Subject: telephone tapping My object is not to be secure against professionals or those with excess cash for nifty devices. The "threat" to my privacy are the students in my Explorer post and the local high school students who shop at Radio Shaft. For the money ($3 and a half-hour) I've secured a too easy tap point. Beyond that it's not worth the trouble. The telco people in C-U usually lock the junction boxes. (Have you ever gone up a pole? It's quite stimulating to the adrenals when done illicitly. 'Tis far better to have a lower profile then stimulate that sort of interest in your calls.) -pbp ------------ From: kludge@pyr.gatech.edu (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: telephone tapping Date: 21 Oct 87 14:51:27 GMT Kaptain Kludge's Cheap and Easy Telephone Tap: --------+----| |------------) (----------------- phone | .1 MFD ) ( to mike input of cheap line | or so ) ( cassette recorder ---+----|----| |------------) (----------------- | | | ) 600-1000 ohm transformer, | ( or old transistor radio output +----) transformer to ----+---- 48V relay tape ---+---^ (110Vac relay works too... not well, though) control Total cost: assuming broken transistor radio is lying around, and a tape recorder can be 'borrowed' from somewhere: $5.00 or so for an RS relay. -- Scott Dorsey Kaptain_Kludge SnailMail: ICS Programming Lab, Georgia Tech, Box 36681, Atlanta, Georgia 30332 Internet: kludge@pyr.gatech.edu uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,rutgers,seismo}!gatech!gitpyr!kludge ------------ Date: Wed, 11 Nov 87 15:00:33 PST From: brock@pnet01.cts.com (Brock Meeks) Subject: Picking locks on pay phones Here in San Diego we've had an unusual round of news reports about "a man with a pony-tail" that is "the only known person in the U.S. that can pick the lock on pay telephones. He is known to frequent Country and Western bars and carry large amounts of change." He is said to reap about $2,000 a day from his "speciality." The police say there are "tell-tail scratch marks" on the phone lock boxes. Question: Is there any truth to these news stories? Is it possible that only one person in the U.S. can pick the lock on a pay telephone? If so, what makes these locks so damn hard to pick. (And, in what sounds like an easy way to pick up a good piece of spare change, why isn't this activity more widespread?) ------------ Date: 19 Nov 87 06:19:05 EST From: *Hobbit* Subject: mister pay phone If they know so much about this guy, why isnt he in the klink already? Pay phones generally use lever locks. These were invented ages ago, before the pin-tumbler, and are still in use on things like phones and safe deposit boxes. A properly constructed one is extremely difficult to defeat; there are numerous false or "confuser" notches built in, and very specialized tools are probably required. It would seem more likely that this guy knocked over a coin collector and stole his key ring. _H* ------------ Date: Thu, 19 Nov 87 22:18:46 EST From: Michael Grant Subject: Re: Picking locks on pay phones I once asked a phoneman emptying one of those safe-like phones about the security of them. He told me that they were alarmed, and that if you open one even with a key at the wrong time, telco will phone the police. I have never verified this though, nor hav I ever ripped open a phone and looked for sensors. Anyone out there had any experience with this? I'm also cc'ing this to telecom. -Mike ------------ Date: Sat, 21 Nov 87 15:29:53 EST From: fine@gondor.psu.edu (Steve Fine) Subject: Re: Picking locks on pay phones Brock Meeks (brock@pnet01.cts.COM) asked if it was true that only one person in the U.S. can pick the lock on a pay phone. I think the uniqueness claim is exagerated. I read an article (possibly in the Toledo Blade) in the past few years about someone who had been picking locks on pay phones in Ohio. I don't remember the details but I think the person had made a special set of tools that allowed him to pick the lock. Even with the special tools, the phone company claimed that it would take about 20 minutes to open the lock. -- Steve Fine Internet: fine@gondor.psu.edu BITNET: fine@psuvaxg ARPANET: fine%psuvaxg.bitnet@wiscvm.arpa UUCP: {allegra|ihnp4|akgua}!psuvax1!gondor!fine ------------ Date: Tue, 24 Nov 87 01:30:27 EST From: ssr@tumtum.cs.umd.edu (Dave Kucharczyk) Subject: Payphone locks Regarding picking a payphone lock it is possible that this person has made a very special tool that would make it much more likely that one could pick a payphone lock. Payphone locks use a 9 or ten lever, lever lock. The levers are very thin and close together to make picking difficult and also have a ratchet that catches the lever if it is raised too high during picking. One could make a tension wrench that also allows the resetting of the ratchet, like when a key is inserted but you would have to have a lock from a payphone in the first place. Then one would need a special tool to throw the bolt on the coin box cover, but that is a relatively simple item compared to the tension wrench for the lock. By the way the coin box is a removable sealed box that has a special seal on it. When the coin collector comes around he pulls the full box out which closes itself as it is extracted from the actual payphone housing. He then inserts a empty and open box back into the housing which then primes it so that upon removal it seals itself untill it is reset, which can only be done by breaking the seal on the box. ssr ------------ Subject: Re: mister pay phone Date: Thu, 26 Nov 87 01:12:55 -0500 From: Fred Blonder From: *Hobbit* Pay phones generally use lever locks. These were invented ages ago, before the pin-tumbler . . . How many ages ago? The pin tumbler lock was invented by (surprise) the ancient Egyptians. True, their keys were a bit large by modern standards (they were hung from the owner's belt.) but the principle was exactly the same. ---- Fred Blonder (301) 454-7690 seismo!mimsy!fred Fred@Mimsy.umd.edu [I stand somewhat corrected. However, the principle wasn't *exactly* the same -- the pins in the lock were only the top halves, and the pegs on the wooden key formed the lower halves when the key was pushed up into the slot. The security was based mostly on the *positioning* of the holes. Related to this, Larry then asks:] From: Larry Hunter Subject: Re: mister pay phone A properly constructed [lever lock] is extremely difficult to defeat... That's interesting! How come I use a pin-tumlber on my door at home? If these things are so good, how come they are not in wider use? Larry [HellifIknow. Perhaps they don't wear as well due to stronger springs, or get jammed more easily if left outside. This *is* an interesting question. I have no theories offhand -- anyone else? _H*] ------------ From: marauder@tc.fluke.com (Bill Landsborough) Subject: Re: Picking locks on pay phones Date: 1 Dec 87 17:41:27 GMT When I was a pay phone coin collector in the early-sixtys in Bakersfield CA there was a man/woman team that was hitting the Kern Co. area pretty hard and they made my work pretty hectic. The way they would do it was they would both go into the phone booth and the woman would hold a newspaper up like they were calling want ads. The man would pick the lock with very sophisoticated tools and then "scrape" the bolt down to open the lock. Pacific Telephone invented a new C version lock that was "unpickable" but this guy was successful in picking at least one C version that I remember. I came into a bar one morning only to have missed him by less than 10 minutes. When I opened up the door for the coin box there was no coin box and there was no money laying in the bottom of the phone housing. I asked the bartender who was the last person to use the phone and he described the couple to me. Sometimes he got ~$120....sometimes $.30. We never caught him while I was there to 1964. Bill Landsborough ------------ From: mimsy!cvl!decuac!uccba!ncoast!smith@RUTGERS.EDU (Phil Smith) Subject: Re: mister pay phone Date: 2 Dec 87 01:27:28 GMT > It would seem more likely that this guy knocked > over a coin collector and stole his key ring. It would not do him a great deal of good to have stolen keys from a coin collector. The coin box locks are all keyed differently. True you will eventually find duplicates I would think, but not enough for the amount of phones he has supposedly hit. -- decvax!mandrill!ncoast!smith ncoast!smith@cwru.csnet (ncoast!smith%cwru.csnet@csnet-relay.ARPA) ------------ Date: Fri, 4 Dec 87 10:31 CDT From: Mike Linnig Subject: RE: Re: Picking locks on pay phones I worked as a teleco lineman one fall (an engineering co-op job). As part of that work we had to go around and extract the cash boxes from the payphones. They gave us a large ring of keys (not a master key). Incidentally, we never really touch the coins, they fall into a coin box that gets replaced when we open up the phone. As for the phones being alarmed, I really don't believe it. Except for high crime areas maybe. On one occasion we had a phone that would not open at all. The key mechinism was jammed (it came from a high school -- I wonder who jammed it?). I got to try and break into the phone -- fun fun. We tried drilling out the lock. We trashed a drill bit or two doing it but we managed to get a nice hole through the lock cylinder. Well, that was fun, but it got us no where. It still wouldn't open. We decided to take the phone off of the wall. The mounting bracket was designed so that you only had access to the mounting screws if the phone was unlocked. I really don't remember how we did it, but we got it off of the wall (probably by brute force -- I had a BIG partner). By the way, no alarms went off. No police arrived on the scene. Remember this was in a high school -- If they alarmed phones in general, I wouldn't expect them to have the high school phone disabled. Anyway, we managed to get the damn thing open by lots of prying with large screwdrivers (used as crowbars) and some hammering. The phone was totally worthless -- but we got the money back to the telco (the phone had to be replaced anyway, can't leave them until they fill up with coins). This was a small telco in southern indiana, Bell systems and GTE may do things differently. Mike ps. Don't do this with your phones, someone MAY get annoyed (grin) ------------ Date: Fri, 4 Dec 87 13:56:57 CST From: Bob Kusumoto Subject: Re: Picking locks on pay phones I don't know about these new phones that other companies other than MaBell are putting out but the old standard pay phones are not alarmed. They have 8 tumbler locks on them so it is VERY difficult to pick these open. I have heard stories about people hooking up a van to a pay phone to pull it out and the axle was ripped out from the van. Another story from the north (Canada) was to pour water into the coin slot, let it freeze over then hit the phone so it splits open. The reason why the phone company switch to these more secure pay phone was that people were breaking into the older models and they needed to collect more money (by the way, the phone company spends aprox $1800 per pay phone plus any other extras they want to add like a light or special set-up for it). Hope this information helps. Bob Kusumoto Internet: kus3@sphinx.uchicago.edu BITNET: kus3@sphinx.uchicago.bitnet UUCP: ...{!inhp4!gargoyle,!oddjob}!sphinx!kus3 ------------ Date: Sat, 5 Dec 87 20:40:33 PST From: brock@pnet01.cts.com (Brock Meeks) Subject: Re: Picking locks on pay phones Steve, I have happened to get a copy of that article you read in the Blade re: the guy with the special tools. I asked at NATA, of the Medeco folks, if they had heard of our San Diego coin bandit, they had, he is the *same* guy as in the blade; an industry legend. Seems the security folks have tracked him across the nation. He used to be a machinist. He's never hit a Medeco lock, only "old telco" boxes (whatever those are). As for the 20 minute time frame? Forget it. The guys I talked to said, "He's just about as fast as a guy with a key." The favorite story: the time he cracked a box right before jumping on an airline, in broad daylight, waiting to board a plane. ------------ Date: Sat, 5 Dec 87 20:36:05 PST From: brock@pnet01.cts.com (Brock Meeks) Subject: Re: Picking locks on pay phones > He told me that they were alarmed, and that if yo upoen one, even with a > key at the wrong time, telco will phone the police. This is wrong, according the pay phone specialist I interviewed for an article I wrote. I was just at the North American Telecomm. Association show in Dallas, and they had a big payphone pavillion there. The only way these guys know a phone has been hit is when they come to empty it. I spoke with the folks at Medeco (they had a big display of their "virtually pick proof lock) and they verified the problem with pay phone locks. You see, it seems that with the influx of private pay phones, these guys were starting to toss "crap on the market" (crap being locks) and they cared more about profits than good security (a topic of conversation that only recently began getting any kind of hearing in the pay phone industry). BUT...cracking the lock box is not the BIG DEAL. The *real* story is that guys are ripping off the expense COMPUTER BOARDS and electronics in the upper half of the phones. These boards run some $300 or $400 a piece and according to one security analyst, "There's a huge black market for these boards." Interestingly enough, the locks protecting the electronics are far easier to pick than the coin box lock. "These guys are more worried about protecting $20-$50 in coins rather than $300-$400 in electronics," the rep from Medeco said. You figure it. ------------ Subject: Submission for misc.security (Coin telephone security) Date: 5 Dec 87 00:43:26 EST (Sat) From: uunet!kitty!larry@RUTGERS.EDU (Larry Lippman) > He told me that they were alarmed, and that if you open > one even with a key at the wrong time, telco will phone the police. If this is true, it only applies to newer electronic coin telephones, and NOT the traditional single-slot coin telephones such as the WECO free standing types (1A, 1C series) or the WECO "panel-mounting" types (2A, 2C series). The only thing close to an "alarm" is that some coin telephones had a coin "bank" [the proper term] with an electrical contact on the top. When the bank gets full of coins, a ground is effectively placed on this contact. This ground is placed in series with a resistor which places a high resistance ground to one side of the telephone line. This condition can be periodically scanned by automatic equipment in the central office to ascertain if a coin telephone bank is full. Actually, I have only seen this done on some early multi-slot coin telephones during the 1960's, and I don't believe this feature was even provided on single-slot coin telephones. Coin telephone repairpersons usually have no keys for access to the coin bank portion of a coin telephone. There is actually no need for them to have access, since all repairs can be made with the upper housing opened. Opening the upper housing gives no access to the coin bank; you would need something like string and chewing gum :-) to extract any coins from the bank. Restricting coin bank keys to coin collection (and not repair) personnel gives telephone companies a better sense of security. Coin banks have a sliding cover with an interesting lever mechanism; the coin banks are intended to be provided with a wire seal. With the seal intact, the bank can be inserted and removed from a coin telephone ONLY ONCE. There is no way to remove a full coin bank and open the cover to get access to the coins without breaking this seal. Quite frankly, telephone company security personnel seem more paranoid about employee theft from coin telephones than from theft committed by the general public. Occasionally, a malfunctioning coin collection mechanism will cause a few coins to spill into the upper housing where a repairperson might have access to them. The proper procedure is to take the coins, place them in a special envelope, label it and seal it right away; the envelope is to be turned in to supervisory personnel as soon as possible. Some BOC security personnel seem to have nothing better to do than plant "marked" coins in the upper housing of a coin telephone, and try to bait some repairperson into not properly turning in the money. I also find amusing the following introductory paragraph as quoted from a BOC coin telephone service manual: "Social changes during the 1960s made the multi-slot coin station a prime target for: vandalism, strong arm robbery, fraud and theft of service. This brought about the introduction of the single slot coin station and a new environment for coin service." Social changes?! :-) My knowledge of coin telephones ended with the single-slot series mentioned above. I have almost no idea what happens inside the new-fangled coin telephones with CRT's and credit-card readers. <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York <> UUCP: {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rutgers|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry <> VOICE: 716/688-1231 {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|utzoo|uunet}!/ <> FAX: 716/741-9635 {G1,G2,G3 modes} "Have you hugged your cat today?" ------------ Date: Tue, 15 Dec 87 19:41:09 EST From: John Hanley Subject: Re: Picking locks on pay phones Maybe pay phones maintained by the BOCs don't have alarms, but a friend of mine is having an independent manufacturer install a pay phone at his store, and he claims that not only can it be programmed to call a number when it's coin box is full and announce in an incredibly sultry voice that it's time to collect, but it can also dial a number and shout for help when it thinks it's being broken into. --JH ------------- Date: Mon, 18 Jan 88 14:47:37 -0500 (EST) From: Walter Ray Smith Subject: Pay phone thief again This pay phone guy has made the big time: Weekly World News! Right next to a diet ad... Copyright (C) 1988 Weekly World News Reprinted without permission Phone ranger rips off $500,000 from booths FBI dragnet is out for the nickel-&-dime desperado Cops have circulated wanted posters throughout the country for an elusive bandit who they say has ripped open pay phone coin boxes for seven years--and made off with $500,000. The phantom phone bandit has been identified in a fugitive FBI warrant as James Clark, 47, who brazenly uses the name "James Bell" and pays bills with mountains of coins. "He's about as slippery as they get," said Powell Caesar of Ohio Bell in Columbus, Ohio. "He's like a crooked Houdini. There isn't a coin box he can't crack." Clark, a former machinist and die-maker from Ohio, drives a blue van, wears cowboy boots, gold-rimmed glasses and has a ponytail. A special tool allows him to open phone boxes, steal the coins and quietly slip away, say phone officials. He's been doing it for seven years, making $70,000 a year tax free. "Every telephone company from California to New York State would like to nail his hide," said Caesar. "Sooner or later he'll slip up and we'll be waiting." Police believe Clark is in Arizona, California or another western state. He's supposed to be armed with a .38 caliber pistol. The wanted posters offer rewards for information leading to his capture. --------------------------------- ***End of traffic from Security*** 29-Feb-88 12:38:25-EST,7673;000000000001 Return-Path: Received: from ALMSA-1 (ALMSA-1.ARPA) by XX.LCS.MIT.EDU with TCP/SMTP; Mon 29 Feb 88 12:37:53-EST Received: from almsal by ALMSA-1.ARPA id af03362; 29 Feb 88 10:28 CST Date: Mon, 29 Feb 88 10:14:40 CST From: Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI To: telecom@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: More traffic from Info-modems Here is some more recent telecom-related traffic from the Info-Modems list, as a follow-up to the batch I just sent earlier. Regards, Will Martin ***Start forwarded traffic*** Date: 12 Feb 88 19:34:00 GMT From: snail!jmzweig@a.cs.uiuc.edu Subject: Re: Disabling Call-Waiting on a Per I have lived in Oregon and Illinois and never had a hitch with getting call waiting turned off (in fact, my autodial sequence always starts with *70W so I don't get cut off). Observation: if you are using the phone for data alot so that getting bleeped to death is a big problem, shouldn't you reconsider whether having call waiting is even worth it? The telco will cut it off for a few bucks, and the problem goes away. So people will get busy signals sometimes -- that's what you are trying to arrange... Suggestion: rag on the phone company. DC is thick as thieves with modem users, and if the phone company doesn't support *70, it is a *big* problem, and should brought to the proper people's attention. Maybe they just threw a switch for your local exchange and never noticed.... Johnny Zweig ------------------ Date: 13 Feb 88 06:18:45 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Patrick_A_Townson@uunet.uu.net Organization: The Portal System (TM) Subject: Re: Disabling Call-Waiting on a Per-Call basis in Metro DC? Neil Groundwater suggests forwarding calls to onesself as a way of preventing call-waiting interupptions. Really, it depends on the generics in the ESS machine. That used to work here in Chicago, then one day it didn't any longer. Forwarding to yourself would set up an semi-infinite loop, it would go around maybe 10-15 times and decide the forwarding chain was never going to end and return -- not a 'busy signal' to the caller -- but actually, a 're-order signal' which sounds alot like a busy to the untrained ear. In some ESS' when you attempt to forward to yourself the system simply won't accept the instruction and either gives you an intercept message or sends you a re-order tone and dumps you. In most exchanges in Chicago we have 'chain-forwarding'; that is, party A can forward to B; B to C; C to D, etc....and a caller to A will wind up at D or wherever...I think there is a limit of about ten or perhaps fifteen interim links in the chain....we have not counted to see. But some of the older ESS stuff here has a different approach. A can forward to B and B can forward to C. Calls to A go to B [AND STOP THERE]. Calls to B forward to C. Whether or not a call to B gets forwarded to C or not depends on the way the call got to B. If it was directly dialed to B, the assumption is B wants C to receive his calls. If it got to B via forwarding from A, there is [no such assumption that A wants C to get his calls]. We only have a few exchanges left here with this arrangement. Most simply keep on forwarding within reason up to 10-15 jumps. Under the above "A goes to B but not to C" configuration, then if I forward my line to you and you forward your line to me there will NOT be an infinite loop since "A wants B to get his calls but there is no assumption they are to be passed further..."; rather, calls to me will ring you, and calls to you will ring me. Using three way calling to set up a dummy call on half the line WILL work provided you do not actually flash in the conference. Here, a three way conference, once established, still allows call waiting to get through. When you have a three way going and get call waiting, flashing puts the three way on hold (letting them still talk to each other!) while you are on the other side taking the call-waiting. If you set up a dummy call to a silent termination line, or a line which will not answer or whatever, then flash and start a new call but never get around to connecting the two, then an incoming call waiting will get a busy signal since call waiting is programmed to never interupt dialing tones or pulses, for obvious reasons. I have two lines here with circular hunt. That is, if one is busy it will hunt the other, or vice versa. Each line also has call waiting. The call waiting takes priority over hunting since with call waiting the line is never "truly busy"...if I activate the disable feature (*70) then the line becomes "truly busy" and a subsequent call hunts to the other physical line. Oddly enough, if I am in the middle of dialing or flashing for a three way or doing something that on its own merits keeps call waiting from working then the interim caller gets a busy signal....very strange. I've also noticed that if I have one of my lines call forwarded and am on the other line with call waiting disabled (meaning true busy) then a call to that line hunts to the other line alright, but does follow the call forwarding instructions. Instead it rings through to me, on the line that is call forwarded. Just tell C&P to get with the times and install the feature! ------------------ Date: 17 Feb 88 19:55:38 GMT From: bpa!drexel!steve@burdvax.prc.unisys.com (Steve ) Organization: Drexel University, Phila., Pa. Subject: Re: Disabling Call-Waiting on a Per-Call basis in Metro DC? Here in Philadelphia, call waiting disables with no problem. Pulse 1170 works much better than Tone *70 (if *70 works at all). When I pulse 1170, I get 3 or 4 short beeps and then another dial tone, so in one command I tell my modem to pulse dial 1170, wait for a second dial tone and then tone dial the actual phone number. Works Great. I have all my numbers programmed that way and get "auto-disabling" when I use the modem. If I try *70 the phone rings . . . and I end up getting a "call cannot be completed as dialed" message. Did it disable anyway? Is there some other way to use *70? Steve Young Drexel University ------------------ Date: 19 Feb 88 21:39:47 GMT From: cooksys!walt@uunet.uu.net (Walt Cooksey) Organization: Cooksey Systems, Inc. Subject: Re: Disabling Call-Waiting on a Per-Call basis in Metro DC? *70 is used with what Southern Bell calls "Presteige (sp?). The standard is 70* on most systems. In any event, every area I have been in lately gives you detailed instructions in the white pages of the phone directory. Walt -- Walt Cooksey COOKSEY SYSTEMS, INC (404) 469-2321 uunet!cooksys!walt CIS 76010,522 gatech!dscatl!cooksys!walt ------------------ Date: 25 Feb 88 03:57:26 GMT From: tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Leonard Erickson) Organization: Rick's Home Grown Unix; Portland, OR Subject: Re: Disabling Call-Waiting on a Per-Call basis in Metro DC? It sounds to me like you have one of the (all too common!) modems that can't dial "*" or "#". Try using a real touchtone phone on the line and see if dialing *70 works that way. If it does, try sending ATDT********** to your modem and see if you get a tone out. As a general rule of thumb, unless the manual EXPLICITLY says that your modem can dial * and #, assume it can't. -- Leonard Erickson ...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard CIS: [70465,203] "I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'. You know... I'd rather be a hacker." ***End forwarded traffic***