BBS and Pirate Group Story from 1985 reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JohnPolka · 2021-12-11 05:31 Below is a link to a newspaper article that came out in 1985 about BBSs and a pirate group. It includes some commentary by me. I was not part of this pirate group, but I knew some of them at school. They ended up getting busted after the newspaper article came out. How they got busted is quite interesting! The following link has a link to the rest of the story including scans of the newspaper article. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/328218-bbs-pirate-group-story- from-1985/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KGBebop · 2021-12-11 09:16 Very cool, thank you ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rlauzon · 2021-12-11 11:06 In my area, there were a bunch of kids who liked to hack MCI codes to get free long distance calls. If you don't remember, this was back in the day of free local calls. You called a local number, entered your MCI code, then the long distance phone number you wanted to call. You'd be billed through MCI for your call instead of the (much more expensive) AT&T. The way the kids would get codes was to run a war-dialer (which just sequentially weht through MCI codes) and call a known BBS. If you got a carrier, it was a good code, if not, it was a bad code. One day, the kids complained that all the codes were coming up good. In other words, MCI was on to them and changed the "bad code" signal to a bogus modem carrier. I warned them that MCI was on to them and it was only a matter of time before something happened. That matter of time was about 1 month and several were in court for very large MCI bills. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- briever · 2021-12-11 15:37 I used to blue box from Scotland to get on USA BBSs, happy days. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ilikeme1 · 2021-12-11 15:55 Blue box? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PraiseBobSlackOff · 2021-12-11 16:09 Used to call a board that was always updating a list of MCI codes. That was 1986. One guy was selling them at the high school for $20 apiece with $5 updates when a code stopped working. I never did anything with these codes. Not me. No way. Never. Ever. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- briever · 2021-12-11 17:01 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue\_box](https://en.wikipedia.org/wik i/Blue_box) I would use it to dial a UK 0800 and then it would redirect to the US network - then I could dial up a BBS for free. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2021-12-12 01:10 I have almost nothing left from my 80 days of BBSing, but I do have a relevant printout of what you are talking about. This is from a New Jersey BBS called "Apple Pirates HideaWay," but these are from a Commodore MPS-802 printer, which is what I had. Nothing anyone thinks of anymore, but I remember thinking that, given the incompatibilities of disk formats, BASIC versions, etc. that it was really cool people with different computers could call each others' boards. The bitch session from Mr. Chips in the second is hilarious in hindsight. [Page 1](https://i.imgur.com/UksfJX4.png) [Page 2](https://i.imgur.com/eZGr0pK.jpg) As for "RODENTS," well... http://textfiles.com/bbs/r0dent.txt https://newtotse.com/oldtotse/en/ego/cult_of_the_dead_cow/cdc126.html MCI was only one of many companies which were providing this service. In the case of Metrophone, in these print-outs, as with many others, for some reason all of the dial-ups near me had a 950 prefix. So we called them "950s," or "950 codes." I actually wrote a program called "Devil's Advocate" for the C=64 which would dial these 950s and enter random codes, and then had a listener program a friend would run which would both answer the call (carrier detected, therefore the code worked), and it would dump the working code to my friend, so in the morning we'd wake up and both have these codes. This seemed somehow more gentlemanly than targeting a local board. With local boards you always risked the code working but there being a busy signal, which would confuse a lot of pre-existing code hacking software out there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2021-12-12 01:15 I love how software companies talk about piracy as if it started last week and is an alarming trend. > Experts at leading software manufacturers say widespread piracy is eroding the industry and may eventually dry it up, thus hurting those computer users who buy all their software. "Dry up," my rosy red ass. There may be great reasons not to pirate, and the ethical argument is fine, but 'you're ruining our industry' is just ridiculous at this point. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/india/information-technology-statistics- national-association-of-software-and-service-company-itbpm-industry- revenue ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dhchunk · 2021-12-12 03:24 So what was the punishment handed down by the courts after they got busted? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PraiseBobSlackOff · 2021-12-12 08:53 Phew. Close call there for Activision to survive the onslaught from Atari Pirates Incorporated! 🤓 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JohnPolka · 2021-12-12 18:00 I am not sure. I do know they lost all their computer equipment. They stopped calling the local BBSs and we lost touch. Years later, one of them popped up on another Group and confirmed that they lost all their equipment. But I don't remember if they mentioned any other punishment. Maybe that was the extent of it since they were minors. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- threeio · 2022-02-15 00:30 I remember being 12... standing at the bottom of space mountain in disney florida and using a MCI code to call my friend back home to tell him a) how badass the ride was and b) how badass I was using my skillz to make this call for free. Ahh the good old days.