T E X T F I L E S

Phone Phreaking: Telephone Access Codes (Codez)

It used to cost an enormous amount of money to call long distance for any large

amount of time. One phone company, one price, one high</I> price. And if

you were connecting to a BBS across the country for hours at 300 baud, that

first phone bill realigned what your parents thought a telephone bill could

cost.

Some of the BBS community, intent on calling anywhere they wanted to whenever

they wanted to, started learning how to scan for telephone access codes, where

you would dial an access number for another telephone company or voice mail

system, and then hit random digits until you stumbled onto a "code" that

let you dial anywhere you wanted to. An entire subculture rose up to trade

in these "codez", and to many casual observers this seemed to be the

whole of Phone Phreaking.