Free Telephones
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Need to make a call, but lack a phone? Short on cash? Concerned with uninvited eavesdroppers? These tips will help you make your phone calls for free.
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[edit] Landline Phones
As widespread as cell phones have become in the last decade, landlines are still widely in use. Common uses are:
- Faxes, which are preferred for signed documents over email attachments.
- Switchboard network for customer and supplier relations.
- Subscription alarm equipment.
- Gate switches for automatic gates in high end apartments, some gated communities, and condos.
- DSL broadband internet.
- Dial up internet (in extremely rural areas).
- Residential use in upper working class homes and above.
- Limited guest use (often local only unless a calling card is used) in hotels and motels.
- Pay phones located in high traffic areas like airports, major city bus transfer points, large supermarkets, bars, and entertainment venues.
[edit] Calling Cards
The land line cards are now marketed to migrant workers who show up to Amerika needing call home without a cell phone or the few folks that must use hotel phones. They are sold in immigrant friendly convenience stores, tourist areas, drug stores and dollar stores. They can still be useful when having to cope with hotel phone long distance, and not having to carry lots of silver change for a payphone. If using a calling card on a payphone, often the payphone owner also charges additional fees onto the calling card. It also goes without saying to pay for a phonecard with cash if you concerned with being discreet. Phone cards can be tracked to the store that sold it. Short of a payphone being tapped because of being in an a "watched" area, it remains the most anonomous, if not expensive.
Before the big Worldcom and telecommunications bust, certain convention cities got bombarded with cheap advertisement calling cards. These are pretty much a thing of the past as conventions have died down and folks do not use payphones. A few companies have even resorted to putting cards with short minutes as a "legal" lottery in non-lottery areas just to stay in business. These cards could be used for cheap calls if you catch someone buying them for the prize and not winning. A scan of the ground around a convenience store in a working class neighborhood on payday might score 5 to 10 minutes on a payphone or a short long distance call from a hotel or home line.
[edit] Cellular Phones
Mobile phones have replaced land line phones as the preferred method of talking. Calls can be made and folks can be reached regardless of location. Today's cell phones are also small computers capable of internet browsing. Cameras are installed in nearly all cell phones as well. There are even newer models that can act as a mobile wi-fi hotspot.
[edit] Cell Phone Security
The cell phone also stores your contacts list and text messages. Folks you may be at odds with could get this info without even contacting a carrier (or needing warrants or other legalities)if they physically get the phone! Your contacts list can be a prize to anyone from the boss you are trying to organize a union with, cops you are trying to hide your pot from, creditors, nosey friends, or even cheating spouses!
If your phone's operating system has a feature that automatically enters your password for IM, email, etc by default turn this off! Take the time to type this out. Otherwise, snoops that get your phone can also read your emails or private facebook or myspace.
Your phone periodically broadcasts for the nearest several towers according to receiving strength. If you are around audio equipment, you can sometimes hear this as interference bleeding on the speakers.It also broadcasts if someone calls or texts you regardless of if you answer or not. There have been court cases where location has been triangulated to determine location to bust or prove alibis in court cases. This is without even using GPS! There are spy applications using embedded GPS that can be installed through physical access to the phone. There are probably some ways to do this remotely as well.
Remember also, with the exception of prepaid, whoever pays for the phone receives a bill with all phone numbers called with the time and city the calls were made to.
Try to keep numbers memorized in case you lose your phone due to thieves or damage to the phone. It can really suck to lose all your contact numbers at an inopportune time.
[edit] Phone Demo
Many stores that sell brand new service plans and phones let one make a telephone call for free. Corporate stores set up phones so people can test out the service features, plans, and reliability. Try any number of Verizon, T-Mobile, at&t wireless (formerly Cingular) or Sprint stores to make free phone calls. If one wants to talk for more than a few minutes without attracting unwanted attention, go at busier times of the day. Also, since the advent of the Apple iPhone, the Apple stores are a great place to use their phones to make free calls. The store in Midtown Manhattan is open 24/7 so one can always call 1-900 numbers if they are feeling frisky at 3AM. The Apple stores are also a great place to browse the Internet uninterrupted for free.
[edit] Sim Cards
Phone got wet and the cheap carrier wants to charge your ass off for a new one? If you can get another cellphone by the same carrier, you can switch out a sim card from the trashed phone to the other phone pretty easy. It is a small card located behind the battery.
Sim cards is also where most phones store your personal carrier network account log in info and contacts list (although some phones save the contacts in phone flash memory as well.)
[edit] Prepaid Cellphones
If you have been not paying utilities or have bill collectors chasing you, the major cell providers are probably going to want to rape you with a huge deposit to get a good billed plan and a nice phone. This can be as low as 200 USD but as high as 1000 USD! If this is the case, you may be looking at prepaid. They give you a cheap no frills phone for around 80 USD to 100 USD start up. You then must go to a store to buy expensive minutes to load on the phone. Sometimes you can save a bit of cash, though, if you get a plan that allows free talk at certain times on phones that have the same carrier. Shop around.
[edit] VOIP
One way to get free anonymous telephone calls is to head into a store selling VoIP services. Most big box stores sell these. Some even have a demonstration kiosk set up with one of their phones to try. These are working phones and will dial out to anywhere in the continental United States. You may even find some that will make international calls.
The only drawback is to actually receive an actual number you can be called back on, you are going to have to put up some cash.
If you have an Internet connection do some research and you should be able to find a free VOIP package to fit your needs. There is even VOIP software for some mobile phones and PDA's! You will either need a headset or headphones and a microphone to use with your computer unless you are using a dedicated VOIP appliance. There are now VOIP phones that look like a mobile but run off of WiFi instead of commercial carriers, you just need to find an open WiFi node.
In addition, there are also VOIP programs such as Skype, these programs allow you to call internationally very cheaply and for nothing calling to another user, in addition most of these programs incorporate a chat service.
You can also do like the internet gamer community has been doing for years. If you can agree to meet at certain times, there are free programs like Ventrilo and Teamspeak. Ventrilo requires you pay for the server. Someone must pay a server company to host vent. Teamspeak servers, with a bit of know-how, can be set up on a linux box if you have a static IP address. You can talk almost worldwide for near free like this.
[edit] Your own Phone Company
A cool way to share phone service is to set up an Asterisk server on a Linux box and connect it to a local phone and/or VOIP line use a dynamic DNS service to direct to your DSL line. Many accounts to share the lines can be made and sharing can be with anyone connected to the internet. If the system gets overloaded just add another local line or VOIP line. Asterisk is free, open, and Linux based http://www.asterisk.org/
[edit] Your Own Mobile Phone Company
A device known as a radio-telephone patch or autopatch connects a two way radio base station to the phone system. Another radio with DTMF tone keypad (most ham radio handhelds have this) is used to attach and dial phone calls. If you have a base antenna on a high hill or tower you might get service for many miles. You and a few friends can set up several patches on different frequencies and locations and then connect them to your internet connected community asterisk phone system saving you big money on mobile calls and totally bypassing the phone company for inter-network calls. Unless you set up some kind of encryption (illegal on ham bands) the calls can be listened to by anyone with a scanner.
[edit] Phone Taps
A lineman's handset, buttset, or home made "beige box" built from a cheap telephone and some alligator clips can help get you a phone call. We have even seen tiny phones as small as a pager with a belt clip and a hands free ear-piece, now chop off one of snap in tips and add alligator clips to the center two wires, perfect! This cheapo lineman's handset will clip into most phone boxes worldwide, you just need to try the wires until you get a dial tone. It might be that the location you are trying to use has a digital phone box this will likely fry your test-set, that is why you make this gadget from a real cheapie. Look for a phone plug in the room you are using or cables attached outside houses and businesses.
In addition to your clip on cable a regular RJ-11 plug cable is useful for punch down boards and phone boxes which have a test jack, many of these boxes are not locked. For homes with the modern phone box, look for something that says "Telephone Network Interface." It has 2 sides, the consumer side and the corporate side. Open the side that belongs to the customer. There will be either one or two standard phone lines plugged into standard phone jacks. If the customers only have one line, one of the jacks will be inactive. Unplug the live one and plug a double phone splitter and your phone into the jack, if you don't have a splitter this temporarily disconnects their home from the phone lines, so they can't eavesdrop, but can't call out, either. That's also why it's best to do this at night. Remember to plug back in the line after you're done.
It might be smart to have a spool of narrow gauge speaker wire in your pack, connect your phone set and lay out wire to behind a shed or into a ditch, you will be free to operate out of sight for a longer time hiding from nosy neighbors. If you are doing some investigations and want to tap the phone line instead of making calls install a switch to disable the microphone on your handset. A 100K ohm resistor inline is useful to add if you just want to tap to the line for information but still allow incoming calls. If you are really paranoid tape a fingernail clipper to your long wire, if a pig shows up clip the line and pretend you are on a cell phone call.... Walk away!!
You can get in legal trouble for this of course but if you keep your calls to 800 numbers and use a calling card you will not increase a home phone bill for your host, we at war with corpgov not Amerikan people. (Remember to pay for your calling card in cash to help prevent tracing and never use the same card from two locations.) The center white/blue or red green on older cables will be the pair you want to attach clips to on your handset as these are the live pair on single line phones. Now that you have a dial tone you can connect your laptop or PDA modem.
If you can get into the telephone utility box find a dead(unconnected) line pair and splice and redirect it to another house in the area onto their often unused second line pair if you want to keep an ear out on your quarry. Don't do this to your house, since the phone company can easily figure out what you are doing if there is an investigation, but someplace that you can safely access.
[edit] Hacks
[edit] Phreaking
You may hear about this in old hacker circles and publications. Most of the old 2600Mhz type hacks to the bell phone system have stopped working, the last North American in band tone controlled exchange closed in Minnesota in 2006. No more classic phreaking.
[edit] GSM/CDMA hacks
Currently, there are no known widespread modifications for modern GSM/CDMA phones. The few systems that used to have free calling workarounds have been discontinued/patched.
There are however, some folks that 'unlock' phones to be used with carriers other than what the service the phone was made for, this is especially useful for GSM phones with tri or quad band capability so you can switch to an international SIM card. Depending on the manufacturer unlocking a phone can be as easy as using an unlock code generator to requiring a specific unlock program and a USB or serial cable, very few phones are more difficult than this. Some carriers will even give up the code if you tell them you will be visiting Europe or Asia. If you buy the phone from an unaffiliated mobile phone sales and repair shop, or car stereo place see if they will do the unlock right there.
[edit] Onboard Vehicle Help Services
Services like GM's OnStar are provided on some upper class vehicles so at the touch of a button help can be summoned. The cops are famous for turning this service on fulltime and listening in. Don't be a fool, the built-in microphone means you have tapped your own car, remember this in a vehicle belonging to family and friends of activists. In any case cars can be easily tapped, activists, make sensitive conversation outside even if you don't have an onboard service call system.
[edit] Lifeline and Link-Up
These are programs designed to help low-income people with communication. To qualify you will need to have an annual income below a certain amount, or be enrolled in certain corpgov programs such as Medicaid. For more info see http://www.lifeline.gov/lifeline_Consumers.html
[edit] Original Free Telephones
Ripping off the phone company is so common that Bell Telephone has a special security division that tries to stay just a little ahead of the average free-loader. Many great devices like the coat hanger release switch have been scrapped because of changes in the phone box. Even the credit card fake-out is doomed to oblivion as the company switches to more computerized techniques. ln our opinion, as long as there is a phone company, and as long as there are outlaws, nobody need ever pay for a call. In 1969 alone the phone company estimated that over 10 million dollars worth of free calls were placed from New York City. Nothing, however, compares with the rip-off of the people by the phone company. In that same year, American Telephone and Telegraph made a profit of 8.6 billion dollars! AT&T, like all public utilities, passes itself off as a service owned by the people, while in actuality nothing could be further from the truth. Only a small percentage of the public owns stock in these companies and a tiny elite clique makes all the policy decisions. Ripping-off the phone company is an act of revolutionary love, so help spread the word.
