How did you discover the PLA?

[RTF]

Back in the mid 1990s I found the old PLA files floating around all over the place through the course of my BBS addiction.  PLA were always among my favorites.

As I drifted away from the dying BBS scene and toward the Internet I sort of forgot about PLA, until the day I found myself on the old TACD site (how many of you old folks remember them?) and rediscovered the PLA stuff hosted there.

I was then without a computer for over a year; I survived only by taking my old floppies to the library and printing up a bunch of my textfiles, including all the PLA issues, on sprocket-feed dot-matrix printers and binding them into spiral notebooks.

Then in '97 or '98 or so, I re-rediscovered the PLA, now on their own domain, and got into the old pla_discussion email list.  (Historian's note: joining that list was the first thing I did under my old "Rufus T Firefly" screenname.)  That was that...

[rogueclown]

* RogueClown absconds from your greenery.

 

[ravenmaddox]

Forescore and a few thousand hours ago, in the midst of great depression and longing for the days of forgotten youth, I began to search online for phone pranks... something along the lines of Roy D. Mercer I believe... and following the tenet of the great Tim Berners Lee I clicked one link... form there another... and from there still another until I found myself at the door of a site called www.phonelosers.com ...

I found many links to what was supposed to be the greatest pranks in all the land... so I clicked play... I was looking for an ironic end to my life... phone pranks repeating endlessly in the background as the blood seeped from my veins taking with it all the loneliness and despair accumulated over a life full of regret... when suddenly... a voice reached out from the darkness... it called to me... "Hello this is Michael from the front desk. We're gonna have to ask you to shut the fuck up sir." I was intrigued... I wanted to hear more...

The next few hours I listened over and over to gullible people getting pwned. I listened as two companies joined together in the new Auto Hut. I listened as a woman tried to get tickets for her children to go see a kiddy porn. I listened as one after another employee of various institutions did exactly what they were told because they thought they were speaking to supervisors. It was awesome! It brought back all my childhood memories of cracking open the local slick stations and rerouting other lines to my house so that I could prank from the comfort of my home without fear of being caught.

Through all this one voice unceasingly echoed in my head. Finally I called out "Speak Lord your servant is listening." The voice responded "Send Brad Carter an email." Brad Carter, I thought to myself, who the hell is that? If anyone, I wanna kick it with this Arbie guy. But not to be one to go against the voices in my head, I wrote the email.

Two weeks go by... I listen to every prank... I eventually find www.notla.com, which leads me to John Sever, Spessa, and Rob T. Firefly - and then I get an email. It's from the Voice!!! The email reads, "Come with me my child. I have heard your request and desire for community of like-mindedness and I am here to grant your wish. Come follow me into the forums... www.phonelosers.com/forums to be exact and here you shall find your greatest desire." Jessica Alba ready and willing to do my every bidding? "No, don't be silly my son, we all know you are a goth fag but here you will find others like yourself and not be judged... unless its really funny... or unless someone is really bored... or unless you say something monumentally stupid... or... well ok everyone here is a dick and fucks with each other from time to time but it is all in love - we are all just one pleasantry away from a dick in the mouth - but here you will have a home"

As the voice begins to fade a bright white light engulfs me. In the distance high above me I see a vision so wonderful... can it be true? A giant glowing Cactus with a halo around his head and thousands of worshipers at his feet. He calls out one last time, 'Happy cactus to all... and to all a good prank!'

... and that's how I discovered the PLA.

[Sidepocket]

May I add one more thing to my original story.

I did visit the website and have heard about you guys, along with 2600 since 1998. I was a major lurker and my big "coming out" was in late 2006/07. So that is why I kind of feel weird in the hacking communities. I like, know you guys and gals, but did not know you. 

[Beni Hendrix]

I was looking for prank call ideas and I found the pla radio podcast via google, and it went from there. Plus this is pretty much the only domain name not blocked by my company's internet blocker. I had heard of your walmart antics in the news a few times over the years as well.

[diggetydank]

Can't remember what year it was, but I think the URL was bueno.org/~phonelosers/. I was into prank calls myself at the time, and saw a writeup of it in some yahoo magazine. I was like, 13 years old. My friends and I were calling OCI until the name changed.  I even bought a tape - oddly enough, 10+ years later, "WHAT COLORS CHROME???" is still in the vernacular among my now far-flung group. There were some other cool tricks I learned from the textfiles that I managed to use, but I can't remember. I check back every so often, glad to see the site is still going strong. Thanks for the laughs RBCP

[squiblez]

a few months back i was wondering a site for Phreak Literature and i found a link to the site

[nyphonejacks]

well.... since someone else resurrected this post..

i found the PLA while i was laid off from verizon around 2002 or 2003?
since i was no longer employed in the field that i so enjoyed working in i at least wanted to find a place where i could chat with other people as obsessed with the telephone network as i was.

i felt good to have a place to discuss my knowledge with other people and perhaps i got too comfortable, i was trying to prove myself too much, or i was just plain bitter with the lay-off but i shared a little bit too much with the community...

i was eventually rehired by verizon with back pay because the layoff violated the union's contract according to the arbatrator... I still stayed active on the boards sharing knowledge, and about a year or so after i was rehired verizon sent the friendly people from the secret service to my house to wake me up with 9mm's and shotguns pointed at my head... needless to say this also lead to my firing...

it took me nearly a year to feel comftorbale to even use a computer, yet alone rebuild the collection of PCs that were seized from me... and even longer to re-appear on the scene... one of the main reasons that i came back to the site was because at my first 2600 meeting in november murd0c invited me to come back on the board...

i am still nervous about what information i post... since i have the philosophy that information should be freely exchanged... so i have typed out many posts that i end up erasing and never posting...

[Godot]

I learned about phreaking when was something like 12 or 13 after reading about it in the Anarchist Cookbook. Using information from the book, I wrote a little bluebox program for my computer. I didn't realize at the time how outdated some of that information was. Eventually, I started looking for more information about phreaking online, and found the Phone Losers of America. The PLA caused me to go through a prank-calling phase of my childhood, which my parents were not pleased with. But it stuck with me. I don't really make prank calls anymore, but I will be following the PLA until the day I die.

[ErrorLoading]

I remember the day I discovered the PLA quite clearly.  It was my 17th birthday.  My dad was drunk again and my mom was so high on meth she couldn't lift her ass off the couch.

I was sitting in my room playing with my pokemon card.  I only had one.  I stole it from my rich friend Davis after he blamed the toilet overflow on me.  Anyway, my pokemon threw a double dagger move 5000 and basically my tv fell onto the floor.  My drunk dad came into the room and hit me.  He said "Fuck you boy I bought that TV!  Now go slangle the doppers!"  I don't even really know what meant, but I said ok and went and hid in the bathroom.  I was hungry so I ate a bar of soap.  They don't taste the best but if you shake around after you eat it, it lathers up and fills your tummy quite nicely.  After about 20 minutes I was confident that my dad had forgotten about the TV so I left the bathroom.

As I went down the hall I noticed a picture on the wall was a bit crooked so I straightened it out.  As I straightened the picture, I realized that the picture was just a metaphor for our family.  My family was the hallway and I was the crooked picture.  I made the whole family look like crap because I was there, just like the picture in the hallway.  I decided to kill myself to make my family better.  I walked over to the computer desk where my dad kept his revolver and picked it up, held it to my head, and slipped on an old taco bell wrapper.  The gun slammed down and hit the keyboard, typing "Phone Losers of America" and hitting "I'm feeling lucky" into a google search.  The PLA website loaded up and I immediately started laughing because of what a dumb concept the site was.  I didn't know how to read back then so I just looked at the pictures and laughed.  My dad came over to the computer wanting to know "What in the hell all of that racket was?!"  He started laughing too at the site.  He said "This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen!"  We agreed and have been best friends since.  He realized at that moment how important I was to him and decided to never drink again.  My mom came over and saw us kissing and she said it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.  So she dropped her meth addiction.  I learned to read so that I could read about all the dumb things on the PLA web site.  My mom and dad have rekindled their love and together run several charities here in town while I'm developing a cure for cancer.  Things really couldn't have worked out better.

[n00blet]

i was wandering the interwebz chill-en with goog and hoo and decided to go to the liquor site and as i was walking down world street i took a left on net road and was sucked into a dns error and spit out here, i began listening to the pranks and started doing them my-self my mother became angered and took away computer and phone access . so needless to say i had to lay the smack down. so when i got out of jail the judge said im not aloud to touch a computer for 18 months and i have to come out of the basement at lease 5 hours a week........true story if i were to have my PO come right now i would go back to jail lolz gtg my mom is coming

[Q_]

I was looking for stuff on phone phreaking

[BadFish]

I don't really remember the year, time of year, or anything like that, since sitting in front of a computer instead of being out in the open tends to help blend seasons and even year(early to mid 90's?), but I do remember that in a sea of douchebag texts sitting stale inside the belly of a 618 BBS I first read either a text by Brad, or a PLA zine...I dunno which.

Suddenly though, and sadly, I like many others drifted away from BBS's and was amazed by the net. It wasn't until some years later that a friend and I decided to start playing Tradewars, and were glad to find The Launchpad still operating in the 618. The year was 1998, and I even believe it was summer, as I'd mostly grown out of my pimply computer screen years and would actually take a walk now and then. Just for shit and giggles I decided to look in at the files, and bumped into PLA....I was super stoked to find it years later, this tome of engaging, funny as hell, real life experiences from a social engineers standpoint. What else could I do at such a time? I hit the internet and on a whim tried to find the PLA....what would you know, Brad had a whole website, and I even think I got to listen to some clips at that time(maybe, maybe not?).

Over the years I've dropped in, read what RBCP has been up to, what everyone has done, and who the latest victim has been. I'm never disappointed in a visit and it always feels new. I'm even trying out pranking myself after all these years, communicating with everyone for the first time....I just wish I would have joined in sooner!

Keep up the good work RBCP, and everyone else who continues to pump new blood into the insanity that is PLA.

[dyslexicoger]

I was setting around bored looked at the phone typed it into yahoo, then typed in loser, because only a loser would search for phone when he is bored. the sad thing is it is true. That was around 1998

[beforever]

I don't know how long I've been registered, probably a long minute.
I was a member of the CDC board back in...01/02 and wanted to find something more phreak oriented and found myself browsing this place.
Have you seen the shambles that place is in now, it's really saddening for me because back in the day it was spectacular.
This place only gets better with age.