456 DEAR HACKER

456 DEAR HACKER

The day 2600 is not allowed to be published is the day the revolution has to begin.

Joel Orange County, CA

If we wait that long, it may be too late.

Dear 2600: Sorta different but at the same time relevant. A local joke around here

is to tell someone to call “The Pickle Man.” You call 617-PICKLES and ask the guy who answers to tell you a joke about pickles. Well, I did this many years ago while drunk at a party but I never forgot it. The number is the direct line to the Boston FBI. I thought you might get a kick out of the number. Enjoy.

Cache $ $ $ Boston

Either you were drunker than you thought or the FBI finally lost its patience. Either way, that number is disconnected.

Dear 2600:

I stumbled across something that I figured might be of interest to other 2600 readers. The other day, at an ATM machine, I happened to see

a VISA CheckCard lying on the machine. Being the good person that

I am, I called the issuing bank and asked where to send this lost card so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. The friendly operator then proceeded to tell me the person’s address and phone number, without me asking. I mailed the card to the person, but I can only imagine what kind of trouble could be caused had I been a malicious hacker.

hell-boy

A C U LT U R E O F R E B E L S

Not to nitpick, but “malicious hacker” is a term coined by the media that’s designed to strike fear into the hearts of the average American and improve the ratings. There are hackers who turn into malicious people and that’s when they move away from hacking and toward crime. It’s in the interest of governments and large corpora- tions to blur that distinction so that we equate exploration, curiosity, and rebellion with things that are evil. Your actions reflect exactly what a hacker does: you dis- covered something, you told everyone about it, and you realized that you found a major privacy violation. We’d like to know the number you called.

Dear 2600:

I have a question regarding frog’s article “Imaginary Friends” on scamming Ma Bell with a fake identity. OK, so you provided the phone company with all that fake info. Don’t they need your real address to give you phone service?

thedespised Yes, but the reason for doing it like this is so that your imaginary friend begins to

turn into a real person. He just happens to be living in your house for now. And the flip side is that if the phone service is in his name, it isn’t in yours.

Dear 2600: In Volume 13, Number 3, alien13 writes that his mom found his 2600

between his mattress and she went crazy. Well, me being a kid as well,

I know this problem and have solved it with a great hiding place — alien13 wasn’t far off when he hid it in his bed. But not the right spot. The best hiding place is inside your box spring (that hollow thing that looks like a second mattress). On the bottom of the box spring is a very flimsy cloth. Poke a large hole in the cloth and place all contraband in there. I keep all my hacking mags as well as other things in there. If you