PLA028 Calling CardsHow To Order And/Or Create Your Own Telephone Calling Card 
Numbers
Written by RedBoxChiliPepper on March 28, 1995
I can't believe I haven't done a file on calling cards yet. I've been ordering 
calling cards since I was in diapers and there's not even a PLA file on it. What 
in the hell is wrong with me? I wrote a file on calling cards a few years ago 
but I lost it in a freak accident with the lawn mower, I think. Not much has 
changed since then, though.
It's really simple and I hardly think that the subject really deserves more that 
a paragraph, let alone a whole file my my pointless babblings should drag it out 
a little more. (See? Two meaningless paragraphs already...)
Selecting Your Target:
Your target can be anyone. A total stranger used to be my favorite choice but 
when I visited my parents recently I was thumbing through my old high school 
yearbook and thinking, "Hmm, this guy was a real dickhead...This teacher hated 
me...This girl turned me down for a date..." So since then most of the people 
that I decided that weren't exactly the best of friends with me in high school 
have gotten larger phone bills than they usually do. They don't have to pay for 
the charges, but it sure is a headache for them. 
I usually make their pin number something meaningful such as my first name so I 
can call them up pretending to be phone company security, "Yes, sir, well, I see 
here that your pin number on that fraudulent card spelled out the word RBCP (my 
real name). Now on my records here I show that you had a disagreement with a 
RBCP in high school and we suspect this may be an act of revenge on his part..."
So no matter who your target is, write down all the information you have on 
them. Mostly you will just need their name and phone number but it helps to have 
their address and possibly their social security number in case the phone 
company wants to verify it.
Ordering The Card:
The card number is almost always the owner's area code, phone number and four 
digit pin number. (xxx-xxx-xxxx-xxxx) To make things easier for the customer, 
you can personalize the pin number. Used to, this was very easy and you didn't 
even have to ask for it. The operator would just say, "And what would you like 
your pin number to be?" But in the last few years the phone company finally 
realized that what they were doing wasn't that bright so they've tightened 
security a little bit.
Sometimes they'll want to call you back at your home and if you're not at home 
then they'll want your social security number to make sure that you're really 
who you say you are. Look up the residential billing office in the front of your 
phone book. (Or if it's long distance, call information.) Here's how my 
conversation with the billing operator usually goes:
OPER: May I help you?
RBCP: Yeah, I had called earlier today about ordering one of your calling 
cards...I just wanted to go ahead and set that up if I could.
OPER: Could I have your home telephone number, area code first?
RBCP: Sure, it's 512-370-4680.
OPER: Your name?
RBCP: Geraldo.
OPER: How many cards will you be needing?
RBCP: Oh...just one is fine.
OPER: Okay, I've placed the order for you and your card will be there in about 
two weeks.
RBCP: Okay, thanks! Hey, am I going to have the same pin number as I selected 
when I called last time?
OPER: I don't show that you called before.
RBCP: Oh, yeah, I called asking questions about the card and the operator said 
that I could make my pin number the same as the pin number on my ATM card.
OPER: What pin number would you like?
RBCP: 7448.
OPER: Okay, it's taken card of. Thank you for using AT&Roy.
It's actually not really even that hard. But sometimes the operator will want 
some additional information such as your social security number or she might 
want to call you back. If I don't have their social security number I just hang 
up and call right back saying that I got hung up on and continue the order and 
the new operator will give me my pin number with no questions.
Another way to get card numbers would be to send the actual card to a post 
office box. (See PLA024 for P.O.Boxes) First you'd call up the billing office 
and ask for all of your future bills to be sent to a new address which is your 
post office box. Then you'd call back and say you'd like to order a calling card 
and don't bother asking for a personalized pin number. In less than two weeks 
you'll receive the card in your box. It'd be a good idea to forward their phone 
bills back to the original address unless you're not planning on keeping that 
box for much longer.
Don't place the order from your home! They're the phone company, for god's sake 
and they'll be able to check their little ANI machines a few months down the 
road and see who called them for that order. (It happened to me once.)
Using The Card:
Here are some handy-dandy guidelines on using your calling cards:
Don't call from your home! Don't call from your friends' homes! Don't call from 
work unless you plan to quit soon. If you call from a home number, you can 
easily be back billed for the charges. This happened to me in L.A. So unless 
you're good with diverting, don't do it from home. 
Keep in mind that the owner of the calling card will have every number you've 
called on his bill as well as every number you've called from. So if this card 
is for revenge purposes, you might want to think about whether or not you want 
this guy having your friends' phone numbers or not. 
Don't use Sprint. (103330+number) I've noticed that after chain dialing a bunch 
of numbers under Sprint on a calling card, the card will go dead soon after 
that. Instead use AT&T. (10288+number) You can dial a ka-zillion numbers through 
them and it'll never go dead. 
Don't distribute the card to out of state friends and don't call overseas. The 
fastest two ways to make a card go dead is to use it from two or more different 
area codes a lot and/or do a lot of overseas calling. Instruct friends not to 
give the card to out of state people and not to call even one overseas number. 
If possible, put an overseas block on the card. 
When you're done with a call, don't hang up! Instead, wait for the person on the 
other end to hang up, then press the # key. AT&T will say, "Please enter another 
number now..." Dial the area code and new number and it'll put you through again 
without having to re-enter your calling card again.
Tricks:
By blocking your ANI and then calling AT&T, you can make your calls seem to come 
from anywhere in the United States. The person you've ordered the calling card 
for won't have to pay for the charges if it's obvious that it's fraud that he 
didn't have anything to do with. But what if you make all the the phone calls 
appear to have been made from his own home? Then what's he gonna tell the 
operator? "Well, even though all the calls are coming from my home, I know 
nothing about this card..."
Dial zero. Ask the operator to dial a toll free number for you. Give her the 
number 1-800-225-5288 and she'll put it through. (That's 1-800-CALL-ATT) When 
you get the "AT&T" stuff, hit zero to get an operator. She'll ask you what 
number you're calling from. Give her the number to the calling card victim's 
home. She'll ask for the number you're calling to and for your calling card 
number and put your call through. After you're done with the call, your can hit 
the # key and dial other numbers just as if you'd dialed direct and it'll all 
show up as being made from the victim's home.
In the past, I've made my calls seem to come from the White House, from local 
police stations, pay phones outside the victim's home, and from the victim's 
grandma's house and mom's house and friends' houses. I'm sure this confuses the 
hell out of him.
Caught Again:
Of course, I got sloppy a few times and got caught. While living in Los Angeles 
and using a card from my friend's house, I charged about $40 worth of calls to a 
calling card number in Oregon. The phone company didn't even calls us about the 
charges, they just tacked 'em onto my friend's phone bill and I paid them.
Another incident was when a stupid friend of mine in Highland, Illinois used a 
card I gave him every night from his home. When the phone company called his 
mom, she gave my name and phone number so the phone company called me. I 
admitted that it was me to keep my friend out of trouble and told the lady that 
the card number was written on a pay phone and I didn't know I was doing any- 
thing wrong. She said in first-time situations like this they don't prosecute (I 
stiffled a laugh) and they'll only charge me for the fraudulent calls made from 
my friend's house. A week later I got the bill, threw it in the trash and moved 
to Indianapolis to meet Jim Bayless.
Only very few times has a phone company called a friend of mine that I called on 
the card and tried to find out about me. When they did, my friends would just 
play dumb. This happened once to Martini (618) when a sherrif from the small 
town of Roscoe, South Dakota (I ordered a calling card from there) deicded to 
investigate for his buddy, I guess. Martini said she didn't know anything and 
that was the end of it.
That's It:
Now you know how to stock up on calling cards. Zak recently placed an order for 
a calling card through MCI and got a personalized pin with it and it worked 
forever. He even gave the guy's incorrect address and birthdate but it still 
worked. So, it's something I'm gonna try soon but don't really know enough to 
write about yet.
Phearless:
I have to show you guys this...A few years ago, a guy I know decided to create 
his very own kewl elite hacking and phreaking group, although the only hacking 
he has ever done in his miserable life is extract the PKUNZIP.COM file to get 
into someone else's WWIV DOS. 
Phearless (a.k.a. Jason Phillips) of Wood River, IL decided to call his k-rad 
group P.H.U.C.K. This creative title is an acronym for Phreak/Hacking United 
Corporate Khaos. (Seems he ran a little short on creativity there at the end, 
huh?) Anyway, what am I getting at? Well, uh...nothing. He's lame, that's all. 
Below is an edited version (VERY edited) of a k-k-kewl file he wrote for the 
group. It was originally about ten pages long but I shortened it.
How to disable Caller ID.
blah,blah,blah,blah...He rambles about his amazing hacking group...
Okay. Onto the program... Do you know how to disable call waiting? You just use 
the *70, feature, right? Easy, eh? Yep well all you do is lets say you're gonna 
call my bulletin board and I was a lame-paranoid bastard with no life who has 
Caller ID. Well, all you do is before my number you type *71,. The number would 
look like this:
*71,1-618-254-4016
You see, 70 disables call waiting and 71 disables Caller ID. Are you kicking 
yourself in the ass now for not find this out by yourself? To find little 
secrets like this, you just dial 0 and talk to the Ma Bell operator. You'll be 
amazed at how stupid the Fone Operators are...They'll tell you anything.
Well, that's about it. That amazing top-secret classified phone company "secret" 
that he "social engineered" out of a "stupid" operator and unveiled to us just 
happens to be available to anyone that knows how to open their phone book. It's 
listed in there along with all the other standard *xx commands that everybody 
knows about and always has been. (Actually, I think the 618 code is *67 now. It 
used to be *71 when they first got it.) He wrote that file before Caller I.D. 
was even available to the area. (Ahead of his time, I guess.)
Anyway, I've had Jason's phile in my hard drive forever now and the only reason 
I kept it this long is for the comic relief and thought maybe I could share it 
with everyone else. He wrote a few others, equally pathetic. That's it for this 
issue, though. Now get out to a pay phone and start ordering those calling cards 
before they quit offering personalized pins! See you in PLA029.
   
