Anonymity?

[ljc]

Sorry, I meant it's best to have headphones. I use Mac OS X 10.4. I have built-in speakers and a built-in microphone in my iMac, but the microphone is quite cheap in my opinion.

[Nagasakinuker]

Skype requires Headphones? What the fuck are you talking about?

  A cheap PC mic won't run you more then five bucks at any store (Target, Wal-Mart, Radioshack).

  From my use of Skype, the number shows up as 00012345 or something. But I've been using it to call tons of people for the past 24 hours. It's free, it's very tough for them to figure out who it's coming from. Use it.

I think he means he needs headphones so there is no echo, which is a very good idea because there is nothing more anoying on the bridge than echo. (well echo and people calling in on thier lawn mower )

[rbcp]

Yeah with cell phones you don't have to worry about *57 or *69.  Everytime I make any calls I use my cell phone, which happens to have complete blocking so I don't need to dial *67 each time.  But inorder for most Telephone companys to give out the information to the police you need to have called at least 3 times.

Cell phones can be *57'ed just as easily as land lines.  *67 doesn't block *57.  So you're not really that much safer using a cell phone.  And as I mentioned before, I only called that lady in the credit card incident one time and I had the police at my door a day later.

And as long as you are not hurting anyone the target problaly won't even worry about it.  Most people don't even know what *57 is.

I wasn't really hurting anyone when I was prank calling that old lady who *57'ed me and sent the police to me.  This is from the old prank calls I did where I insisted that some old lady named Mrs. Gates was Bill Gates mom and I was pissed at her for messing up my computer.  I never threatened her in those calls.  She was just a bored old woman so she pressed charges.

EDIT: And RBCP how long were you in jail for that credit card thing?   

No jail time, just a fine.  $200 I think.

[ljc]

What did you use to make the hotel prank calls?

[z09]

RBCP- *57 won't work against cell phone's.  Not in Orange County atleast.  However a call to the police will.  My advice, a payphone. 

[rbcp]

RBCP- *57 won't work against cell phone's.  Not in Orange County atleast.  However a call to the police will.  My advice, a payphone. 

PLA Radio Episode #9 - *57ing in Orange County! 

What happened to your previous advice of "don't worry about it"?

[ghostman]

Yeah Skype doesn't have a host/server...  it picks users' PCs with good bandwith + uses that.  Skype's great for anonymity, even Wikipedia says so:

Skype is a "complete black box" -- that is, it is extremely hard for the lay user to identify what it is doing, or what it might be doing, or how appropriately it is doing it. It uses security through obscurity to make itself troublesome to analyse or reverse engineer without a significant amount of work, or use of emulation.

Skype currently fails to protect against multiple ghost logins: if a hacker is able to obtain a user's login password, the hacker could login as that user, and change their status to "Hidden". Thereafter, any chat sessions involving the real user are copied to the hacker's "ghost" account. This makes the content of chat sessions relatively insecure despite the fact that the packets being intercepted are fully encrypted.

In September 2005 a prank program was launched online. This unauthorised patch allowed a Skype user to masquerade as another user. The technique was for the joker to put up an attractive profile with a girl’s name and picture, and put that profile into "Skype me" mode. Within minutes generally another user would invariably try calling/chatting. The patch running the whole time would then partner up another call to the first caller, and send messages from the first person to the second, and vice versa. This way both people thought they were talking to a middle user whose profile of course was entirely fake. The patch only supported text messaging.

[silentneep]

Be careful that they don't have ANI, though.  ANI as you problaly know can't be blocked.

Yes, but don't forget about that precious tool, the ANI Fail....

[z09]

Yes, but don't forget about that precious tool, the ANI Fail....

Yes, might I recomend making all prank calls through the operator. 

And RBCP- *57 and *69 DON'T work on cell phones.  You can still be traced but the star codes won't work.  I have just tried.  You will get an error message.  Once again that is only here in OC.  Try doing it at your house.

EDIT: I found this http://www.oa.state.pa.us/oac/lib/oac/MDs/720.6.pdf

with the magic of Google.  This answers alot of questions.

[kcochran]

And RBCP- *57 and *69 DON'T work on cell phones.  You can still be traced but the star codes won't work.  I have just tried.  You will get an error message.  Once again that is only here in OC.  Try doing it at your house.

That's not entirely accurate.

*69 won't work on any phone that doesn't pass the number via Caller ID - i.e. *67 blocks, or other restricted numbers (such as unpublished).  It doesn't matter if it's a cellphone or not.  My cell number is not "restricted".  If I call someone, they can *69 my cell.  This has been verified with AT&T/Cingular, Verizon, Qwest, Sprint, Nextel, Verizon and T-Mobile.  I've had each and every one of those carriers within the last 2-3 years, for personal or business.

*57 is potentially trickier when a cellular phone has been blocked, but it's not impossible.  The human element of tracking/tracing gets involved here.

Your cellular carrier knows EVERYONE you call - it's a matter of billing/record keeping.  If a person *57's after receiving a call, their carrier may not be able to pull up that number, but they can flag the last call based on where it came from, i.e. a Verizon POP (the point at which the airwaves meet the copper).  The called carrier (the person that was pranked) knows the origination time of the call, the duration of the call, and the termination time of the call.  They know the incoming carrier (in our example, Verizon).  With a police warrant/request, they can contact the carrier that made the call, give them the origination, duration and termination information (SHUN SHUN SHUN!), and the cellular carrier can match that with your outgoing call records, and, presto, the police have a match.

At my prior employer, the exact thing happened.  We had an employee who was making threatening phone calls to his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend and his family.  Qwest couldn't get the actual cell number, but they knew that it was coming from a Nextel phone, and then changed to a Verizon phone (we changed carriers mid-harrassment cycle).  They correlated information with both carriers, and that produced a match to one of our corporate cellphones.  Obviously, we know who was issued that phone, and HR had his final paycheck ready for him when the police came to question him.

Even when a *57 errors out (you get the error message intercept), it still flags all the pertinent information in the system.

If you're REALLY worried about anonymity, don't make calls from your house, or anything that might be papered to you.  Prepaid calling cards from a cellphone, beige box, whatever...

[z09]

Most of this Depends on your area and phone company.  So I will be very specific:

First off, in my area *67 won't block *69 or *57.  I already tried. 

Second, in my area, Sprint Cell Phones, can't get *57 by Verizon land lines.

Third, in my area, Verizon Land Lines, can get *57 by any cell phone. 

Fourth, in my area and everybody elses, you can be traced by Cell Phone just as easily as Land Lines.  Just keep in mind that the star codes don't work, in some areas.  A call to the Phone Company or the Police Department will make them work.
 

[CountyKid]

HA HA! YOU THOUGHT I HAD SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT TO SAY BECAUSE I'M TYPING IN CAPS. YOU WERE WRONG. I AM JUST WASTING YOUR TIME.

[computerwiz_222]

My own mediocre attempt at humor has been highly amusing to myself.[/shadow]