alt Hacker NewsI never ran up a phone bill, but I did get the cops sent to my house.
I was into war dialing with my C64. Every night I would input the parameters, start the war dialer, go to sleep, then wake up the next morning hoping I got something. Well, one night, about an hour-or-so after I started the war dialer, there was a loud knock on the front door. I looked out the window and saw a cop car. I knew what was going on immediately. I somehow fucked up inputing the dialing prefix to the war dialer, setting it to’ 911’. Then I let the dialer do its thing; it called 911 around 1000 times. The cops were NOT happy. They were basically yelling at my mom. I tried to explain what was going on, but people didn’t know about computers or modems back then. The cops thought I was calling 911 and hanging up, over and over, like a prank.
One thing I remember is my Mom really wasn’t all that mad at me. She wasn’t happy, for sure, but I got the sense that she recognized that there was a lot worse trouble I could be getting myself into. I’m 100% certain that she would’ve been more upset if I ran up a $300 phone bill.
That's a pretty hilarious story of war dialing. I used to wardial every night too.
I had the FBI show up my house this one time... one of my warez/phreak acquaintances had started a world-wide conference call of phreaks originating from a PBX located somehow inside a very very top secret military facility. I just told them I didn't know anything about it, I didn't call anyone, I just picked up a phone and it was this chaotic party-line call, I just hung up after a while. I don't actually know who added me to that call, but I have my suspicions. My mom was really not happy about that.