A clear box is an amplifier used by phreaks to use post-pay pay phones without paying. In some locations, especially rural areas in the United States and Canada, pay phones were configured for "post-pay" operation. In this mode, the handset microphone is muted until payment is made. The user of a post-pay pay phone would dial first, wait until the called party answered, and at that point the user would be prompted to insert the coins. Upon receiving the correct payment for the call, the pay phone would then connect the microphone and allow the caller to speak. An artifact of this scheme was that the called party usually heard the ACTS tones produced by the pay phone upon coin deposit.
The clear box circumvented the handset mute by providing the phreak with another microphone, whose output is amplified and fed into an induction coil. The induction coil is then placed on the pay phone's line or on its case near a sensitive circuit, introducing the caller's voice via induction and bypassing the muted handset.
Several text files on the subject of the clear box observe that some calls, such as to time and weather services and other information lines, do not require voice input from the caller. On post-pay phones, calls to such numbers were effectively free without the use of a clear box.
The clear box has become obsolete with the widespread conversion of post-pay phones to pre-pay operation.
A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic signals that are transmitted via cables and other communication channels to another telephone which reproduces the sound to the receiving user. The term is derived from Ancient Greek: τῆλε, romanized: tēle, lit. 'far' and φωνή, together meaning distant voice.
In telecommunications, an acoustic coupler is an interface device for coupling electrical signals by acoustical means—usually into and out of a telephone.
A hybrid transformer is a type of directional coupler which is designed to be configured as a circuit having four ports that are conjugate in pairs, implemented using one or more transformers. It is a particular case of the more general concept of a hybrid coupler.
Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term phreak is a sensational spelling of the word freak with the ph- from phone, and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. Phreak, phreaker, or phone phreak are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking.
Wiretapping, also known as wire tapping or telephone tapping, is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connection was an actual electrical tap on an analog telephone or telegraph line. Legal wiretapping by a government agency is also called lawful interception. Passive wiretapping monitors or records the traffic, while active wiretapping alters or otherwise affects it.
Enhanced 911 is a system used in North America to automatically provide the caller's location to 911 dispatchers. 911 is the universal emergency telephone number in the region. In the European Union, a similar system exists known as E112 and known as eCall when called by a vehicle.
A red box is a phreaking device that generates tones to simulate inserting coins in pay phones, thus fooling the system into completing free calls. In the United States, a nickel is represented by one tone, a dime by two, and a quarter by a set of five. Any device capable of playing back recorded sounds can potentially be used as a red box. Commonly used devices include modified Radio Shack tone dialers, personal MP3 players, and audio-recording greeting cards.
A payphone is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic public areas. Prepayment is required by inserting coins or telephone tokens, swiping a credit or debit card, or using a telephone card.
A blue box is an electronic device that produces tones used to generate the in-band signaling tones formerly used within the North American long-distance telephone network to send line status and called number information over voice circuits. This allowed an illicit user, referred to as a "phreaker", to place long-distance calls, without using the network's user facilities, that would be billed to another number or dismissed entirely as an incomplete call. A number of similar "color boxes" were also created to control other aspects of the phone network.
A telephone call or telephone conversation, also known as a phone call or voice call, is a connection over a telephone network between the called party and the calling party. Telephone calls started in the late 19th century. As technology has improved, a majority of telephone calls are made over a cellular network through mobile phones or over the internet with Voice over IP. Telephone calls are typically used for real-time conversation between two or more parties, especially when the parties cannot meet in person.
A telecommunications relay service, also known as TRS, relay service, or IP-relay, or Web-based relay service, is an operator service that allows people who are deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, or have a speech disorder to place calls to standard telephone users via a keyboard or assistive device. Originally, relay services were designed to be connected through a TDD, teletypewriter (TTY) or other assistive telephone device. Services gradually have expanded to include almost any real-time text capable technology such as a personal computer, laptop, mobile phone, PDA, and many other devices. The first TTY was invented by deaf scientist Robert Weitbrecht in 1964. The first relay service was established in 1974 by Converse Communications of Connecticut.
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.
A prepaid mobile device, also known as a pay-as-you-go (PAYG), pay-as-you-talk, pay and go, go-phone, prepay, or burner phone, is a mobile device such as a phone for which credit is purchased in advance of service use. The purchased credit is used to pay for telecommunications services at the point the service is accessed or consumed. If there is no credit, then access is denied by the cellular network or Intelligent Network. Users can top up their credit at any time using a variety of payment mechanisms.
A sound-powered telephone is a communication device that allows users to talk to each other with the use of a handset, similar to a conventional telephone, but without the use of external power. This technology has been used since at least 1944 for both routine and emergency communication on ships to allow communication between key locations on a vessel if power is unavailable. A sound-powered phone circuit can have two or more stations on the same circuit. The circuit is always live, thus a user begins speaking rather than dialing another station. Sound-powered telephones are not normally connected to a telephone exchange.
In Phreaking, the green box was a device whose function was to manipulate the coin collection mechanism of payphones. It employed three of the MF (multi-frequency) tones used in the blue box and could be viewed as a subset of that device.
A headset is a combination of headphone and microphone. Headsets connect over a telephone or to a computer, allowing the user to speak and listen while keeping both hands free. They are commonly used in customer service and technical support centers, where employees can converse with customers while typing information into a computer. They are also common among computer gamers and let them talk with each other and hear others while using their keyboards and mice to play the game.
The candlestick telephone is a style of telephone that was common from the late 1890s to the 1940s. A candlestick telephone is also often referred to as a desk stand, an upright, or a stick phone. Candlestick telephones featured a mouthpiece (transmitter) mounted at the top of the stand, and a receiver (earphone) that was held by the user to the ear during a call. When the telephone was not in use, the receiver rested in the fork of the switch hook protruding to the side of the stand, thereby disconnecting the audio circuit from the telephone network.
Ringing is a telecommunication signal that causes a bell or other device to alert a telephone subscriber to an incoming telephone call. Historically, this entailed sending a high-voltage alternating current over the telephone line to a customer station which contained an electromagnetic bell. It is therefore also commonly referred to as power ringing, to distinguish it from another signal, audible ringing, or ringing tone, which is sent to the originating caller to indicate that the destination telephone is in fact ringing.
The history of the prepaid mobile phones began in the 1990s when mobile phone operators sought to expand their market reach. Up until this point, mobile phone services were exclusively offered on a postpaid basis (contract-based), which excluded individuals with poor credit ratings and minors under the age of 18 In early 1991, Kenneth Johnson of Queens, New York along with Mark Feldman, Pedro Diaz and Kevin Lambright of Alicomm Mobile, was the first to successfully create a prepaid cellular phone and Network. His company expanded to a Sales force from Maine to Florida. Two years later others would come out with similar systems.
Phone hacking is the practice of exploring a mobile device, often using computer exploits to analyze everything from the lowest memory and CPU levels up to the highest file system and process levels. Modern open source tooling has become fairly sophisticated to be able to "hook" into individual functions within any running app on an unlocked device and allow deep inspection and modification of its functions.
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