Help with a Tangerine Box

[Partynoise]

I found this text at www.phreaksandgeeks.com       

And I was wondering if someone could explain exactly what I use it for. It tells you that in the text but I don't get it.             


THE TANGERINE BOX
                       By Happy Harley

First Off-This is fucking illegal so I would not try it at
all. But have fun if you do, and BTW I assume no
responsibilty for whatever the fuck you may do with this.


Intro-A tangerine box is a box that inables you to plug it
in, then listen to the conversation, without them hearing a
click or anything...plus a jack for headphone, or tape.

Parts:Modular Phone Conector
Speaker
Headphone Jack

You can get these at your local Radio Shit, er Shack store...

Here the plans, schamateic or whatever

Key To symbols:
  *  *
        =Modular Phone Jack, so does *.
*     *

<==>=Speaker


 V
/Ý\=Head phone jack
R=Red
G=Green
B=Black
Y=Yellow, or sometimes white

                  YYYYYYYYYYYY
                  Y          Y
    YYYYYYYYYYYYYYY   <==>   Y
    Y              YY/  /  YY
    Y                  G  Y
   /    /GGGGGGG     GG  Y
  *Y  *G       G    G   Y
                G   G  Y
*R      *B       G\ Ý /
                    V

Note=Just leave the Red&Black alone..

Now, the speaker will be listening when ever the phone is
plugged in, and when you plug a pair of headphone or a tape
recorder into the Headphone jack, the speaker will
automatically disable.  Now have fun, and most
importantly...DON'T GET CAUGHT

[PHISH-PHREAK]

This box is pretty much made for beige boxing in the rain. All it is is a beige box put inside of tangerine skin so the wires aren't showing.

[Partynoise]

Haha, smartass.

[Skunkworks]

I have a few tangerine boxes and actually there is nothing illegal about having them or using them, its only illegal to use them on someones elses phone line without their consent.

"Happy Harley" is doing it totally wrong and his design will fry any audio device you plug it into, what you really want is a capactive coupler.

Check out this thread over in the binrev forums, especially my posts  : http://www.binrev.com/forums/index.php/topic/41148-direct-phone-line-recording-and-playback-recommendations

But you MUST have an isolation transformer and bipolar capacitors in series with it to not kill all your equipment.

Basically you'll be building this, but for $2-3: http://www.voicelogging-recorders.com/product/LIC-1PC

Here is a rough schematic, except my version has a capacitor on the left leg of the transformer too, and instead of being plugged into the W and G wires on the handset cord, it plugs into the R and G from the POTS line.

Hope this helps!

Edit: BTW these are neat to listen to incoming answering machine messages with without picking up a phone or being near the machine, they are also great for recording conversations and caller ID signals onto your computer.