The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines for companies and organizations .(December 2013) |
Formation | 1994 |
---|---|
Purpose | e-zine/Phreaking/Prank call |
Headquarters | Portland, Oregon, U.S. |
Region served | International |
Platforms | Internet |
Founder | Brad Carter (RBCP) |
Known for | The Snow Plow Show e-zine PLA Radio Voice bridge Forums |
Website | phonelosers |
The Phone Losers of America (PLA) is an internet prank call community founded in 1994 as a phone phreaking and hacking e-zine. Today the PLA hosts a prank call podcast called the Snow Plow Show, which it has hosted since 2012.
The Phone Losers of America were founded by Brad Carter and Zak (el_jefe) in 1994, [1] in an era when landlines were plentiful. [2] Zak currently maintains a USA payphone directory. [3]
The PLA text files continued until mid-1997. [4]
In the early 2000s, with the introduction of companies offering Caller ID Spoofing, groups such as the Phone Losers of America became notable in their utilisation of the service for prank calling, for example in the spoofing of law enforcement and corporate office numbers. [5]
In August 2015, the Columbia Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri, featured the PLA in an article about a series of "strange calls" received by local residents who had signed a petition against a crosswalk construction project. [6] The article quoted an FBI representative who allegedly told the Tribune that the calls to Columbia residents "would likely be prosecuted on the local level." [6]
In early November 2016, Carter reported that the FBI performed an early-morning raid on his recording studio, resulting in a temporary seizure of all technical equipment. The raid was triggered by an attempt to access customer profiles at numerous retail stores across the country, primarily Safeway, of which some were utilized for prank phone calls. [7] [8] The case was treated as a federal matter, and was presided over by Judge Marco A. Hernandez of the Federal District Court of Oregon. [8] On October 16, 2017, Judge Hernandez sentenced Carter to eight months of home detention, followed by five years of probation. Carter must pay $19,600 in restitution to Safeway as a consequence. [9]
The PLA maintains an archive of answer machine messages in text-based format, which Motherboard have described as being the "ringtones of their day". [10]
Kevin David Mitnick was an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. He is best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crimes. Mitnick's pursuit, arrest, trial and sentence were all controversial, as were the associated media coverage, books and films. After his release from prison, he ran his own security firm, Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC, and was also involved with other computer security businesses.
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.
KOIN is a television station in Portland, Oregon, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Salem–licensed CW owned-and-operated station KRCW-TV. The two stations share studios in the basement of the KOIN Center skyscraper on Southwest Columbia Street in downtown Portland; KOIN's transmitter is located in the Sylvan-Highlands neighborhood of the city.
KRCW-TV is a television station licensed to Salem, Oregon, United States, serving as the Portland-area outlet for The CW. It is owned and operated by network majority owner Nexstar Media Group alongside CBS affiliate KOIN. The two stations share studios in the basement of the KOIN Center skyscraper on Southwest Columbia Street in downtown Portland; KRCW-TV's transmitter is located in the Sylvan-Highlands neighborhood of the city.
Caller ID spoofing is a spoofing attack which causes the telephone network's Caller ID to indicate to the receiver of a call that the originator of the call is a station other than the true originating station. This can lead to a display showing a phone number different from that of the telephone from which the call was placed.
Voice phishing, or vishing, is the use of telephony to conduct phishing attacks.
KOQL is a top 40 (CHR)-formatted radio station owned by Cumulus Media. The station broadcasts from Columbia, Missouri, with an ERP of 69,000 watt (69kW). The station serves the Mid-Missouri area. Its transmitter is located about 20 miles west of Jefferson City.
The George Jackson Brigade was a militant group founded in the mid-1970s, based in Seattle, Washington, and named after George Jackson, a dissident prisoner and Black Panther member shot and killed during an alleged escape attempt at San Quentin Prison in 1971. The group combined veterans of the women's liberation movement, homosexuals and Black prisoners.
Swatting is a criminal harassment act of deceiving an emergency service into sending a police or emergency service response team to another person's address. This is triggered by false reporting of a serious law enforcement emergency, such as a bomb threat, murder, hostage situation, or a false report of a mental health emergency, such as reporting that a person is suicidal or homicidal and may be armed, among other things.
A prank call is a telephone call intended by the caller as a practical joke played on the person answering. It is often a type of nuisance call. It can be illegal under certain circumstances.
Cellebrite DI Ltd. is a digital intelligence company headquartered in Petah Tikva, Israel, that provides tools for law enforcement agencies as well as enterprise companies and service providers to collect, review, analyze and manage digital data. Their flagship product series is the Cellebrite UFED.
Matthew Weigman is a blind American man who has used his heightened hearing ability to help him deceive telephone operators and fake various in-band phone signals. Before his arrest at the age of 18, Weigman had used this ability to become a well-known phone phreaker, memorizing phone numbers by tone and performing uncanny imitations of various phone line operators to perform pranks such as swatting his rivals.
Tor Bernhard Ekeland is a New York City based computer, trial and appellate lawyer. He is best known for representing hackers prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA"), as well as white-collar defendants, in federal criminal court and on appeal across the United States.
On January 2, 2016, an armed group of right-wing militants seized and occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, and continued to occupy it until law enforcement made a final arrest on February 11, 2016. Their leader was Ammon Bundy, who participated in the 2014 Bundy standoff at his father's Nevada ranch. Other members of the group were loosely affiliated with non-governmental militias and the sovereign citizen movement.
This timeline of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge describes the progression of events leading up to, during, and after the occupation. The 2016 event played out over several weeks of public statements, occupying activity, and rallies.
The Apple–FBI encryption dispute concerns whether and to what extent courts in the United States can compel manufacturers to assist in unlocking cell phones whose data are cryptographically protected. There is much debate over public access to strong encryption.
The Special Counsel investigation was a United States law enforcement and counterintelligence investigation of the Russian government's efforts to interfere in United States politics and any possible involvement by members of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. It was primarily focused on the 2016 presidential election.
Joshua Adam Schulte is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who was convicted of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks published the documents as Vault 7, which The New York Times called "the largest loss of classified documents in the agency's history and a huge embarrassment for C.I.A. officials." After his conviction, the Department of Justice called it "one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history."
In January 2020, the FTI Consulting company claimed that in May 2018 with "medium to high confidence" the phone of Jeff Bezos had been hacked by a file sent from the WhatsApp account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudi Arabian embassy to the United States has denied the allegations. Billionaire Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post newspaper and founder of the company Amazon, engaged FTI Consulting in February 2019 after the National Enquirer in January 2019 reported details of Bezos's affair. FTI Consulting did not link the National Enquirer to the hack. In December 2021, the FBI stated they could not find proof to substantiate claims that Saudi Arabia hacked Jeff Bezos phone, and has considered an investigation into those allegations a low priority.
Futel is a public arts organization in Portland, Oregon dedicated to preserving and maintaining public telephone hardware and offering free phone and basic information services. Futel was founded by Karl Anderson, a former software engineer, and Elijah St. Clair.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)