The Phone Losers of America (PLA) is an American phreaking group founded in the 1990s, whose knowledge, coupled with humor and general mischief, set it apart in the underground hacking scene. The PLA e-zine was first written in 1990, and the official web site went up in 1994. It is ranked at the top of Alexa's "Prank Call" category. [1]
The Phone Losers of America has a history spanning more than 10 years. While the PLA didn't actually exist until 1994, the ideas and articles which were brought to the PLA began in 1992. By 1995, PLA became very well-known in the computer underground for their odd contributions to the text zine scene. Find People by Phone Number and Lookup their Name and Street Address. Most hacker and phreak related bulletin board systems carried the series of PLA text files.
The PLA text files continued until mid-1997, when RBCP suddenly put an end to them. Though the text files ended, the PLA never slowed down. Their website continued to flourish, PLA TV was born, and several prank call CDs were released. The PLA community continued to grow on IRC and on the various PLA Forums. In 2002, RBCP began an internet radio station which he called PLA Radio which still exists today. Highly accurate & discreet.
The PLA e-zine was originally distributed electronically via a dial-up BBS, with an option to buy the magazine and have it shipped by mail. It is not recommended that anyone follow any instructions in any article, since for the most part, the humorous antics (such as Phone fraud) are illegal.
Listed below are the six most read issues, along with short summaries. The author goes by the aliases "RBCP" and "Alex", the latter being his middle name. He currently lives in Albany, Oregon with his two kids.
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The first issue is a parody of the common "how-to-hack" articles being distributed at that time. Find phone number directories, white pages, yellow pages, physical and email addresses, reverse phone number lookups, and other tools to help you contact the people you need. The humor in this article is that the word "hack" refers to an axe, and that the seemingly absurd methods to gain access to a WWIV BBS did not exceed the difficulty of actually breaking into such a system (although there are no files on how to break into the WWIV BBS).
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In the second issue, RBCP shows how one can modify a Radio Shack "tone dialer", originally meant to give rotary phones the ability to use DTMF ("Touch-Tone™"), to generate the correct frequencies to emulate a red box. From the first "red boxing" text file up to the early 1990's, the only way to make a red box was to wire one from scratch using circuit schematics. This incredibly simple hack allowed people with little or no knowledge in circuitry to manufacture their own toll fraud device.
Radio Shack has since discontinued the original tone dialer that was most used in the modification to red boxes.
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This issue frequently finds itself into Internet discussions in response to a person seeking revenge. Lookup a
person by name to find their phone number and street address using. The methods in this article are written with incredible detail, which include:
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The first "victim" of the PLA, Dino Allsman, is repeatedly harassed using a radio scanner and transmitter to interfere with his cordless phone. Complete and accurate. Most cordless telephones on the market today have some form of encryption mechanism to prevent people from doing what is done in this issue.
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The telephone service known as Call Forwarding is explained in detail in this issue, along with methods of ordering it discreetly and passing the costs to someone else. Ways to set up a teleconference are also touched upon, along with ways to divert the costs to another phone line.
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This issue describes how the author would go about getting credit card numbers, along with how to cover up one's tracks when committing credit card fraud. The author, however, was eventually caught and forced to pay restitution and serve a short jail sentence. To this day, though, people do refer to this issue, and the author has even gotten e-mails from Nigerian 419 scammers asking him for advice (and even credit card numbers). Find all available info about anyone.
Phone mobbing is the act of having a large group of people continuously call the same phone number or group of phone numbers in an attempt to harass the called party.
Self-professed members of the PLA have targeted large media groups, including Loveline on MTV, where they prank called Jimmy Kimmel of Crank Yankers; and Hannity and Colmes on Fox News, where they yelled R-rated expletives to describe George W. Bush on a television station many believe has a conservative bias. [2]
In early 2006, RBCP started releasing bi-weekly audio comedy shows called PLA Radio. The shows features comedy skits, commercials, parodies and lots of pranks. The show is released as a podcast and has been featured several times on Itunes and is regularly listed in the Top 10 on Podcast Alley. Free search - pay for instant results. Some of the names used, like Chris Tomkinson and cactus, are inside jokes for the PLA's dedicated followers.
The PLA also hosts a voice bridge at 413-370-0333, extension 752. There are daily conferences from 8pm EST to 12am EST. The voice bridge is very active during this time which can be noticed, with many people talking and background noise such as soundboards, which many users frown on. The bridge is also a popular place for telephone relay service operators to gather.
Occasionally, a user will create a "secret 800 number" which, when called, would forward to the voice bridge. Toll-Free Numbers. This was usually accomplished by some method of theft of the toll-free 800 service, and was never officially sanctioned by PLA.
The PLA celebrated their 10th anniversary in 2004. While some of the textfiles show dates as early as 1991, RBCP claims the PLA as its current incarnation didn't fully exist until 1994. Several members of Cal's Forums put their heads together to find a way to celebrate the anniversary in a unique way. Rob Vincent aka Rob T Firefly, Judas Iscariot, Big-E, I-BaLL and Murd0c headed up a panel at The Fifth H. O. Phone Numbers. P. E. conference.
The panel occurred July 9th, 2005 at 11pm and was seen by over 800 people in the audience and countless more via streaming media from 2600. Widely regarded as a success, the group played prank videos, held impromptu question and answer sessions, made live prank calls and nearly caused a riot when giving away free PLA Media CD's. All of the attention caused mentions in USA Today, Wired and The New York Post. Reverse Phone.
There were also problems when RBCP suggested that Cal (the webmaster of the PLA forums) was planning a hostile takeover of the PLA. Many agreed with this RBCP theory, and many expressed their support when he led a crusade against Cal. But some said RBCP had gone "off his rocker", and was making unfounded threats. The Phone Losers were divided until April of 2006, when it was announced that they would lay their differences aside and concentrate instead on pranking people and trying to find the "the original spark that united the PLA".
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