416 DEAR HACKER

416 DEAR HACKER

Dear 2600: In response to police “sting” BBSes, why not get one of those books that

list stolen and expired credit cards (they are issued weekly or biweekly). Type the contents into a disk and dump 40 megabytes of burned credit card numbers into these cop traps to spring them safely. If it comes to trial, tell the jury where you got them and watch the DA blush and the jury laugh. If the cops had any sense, that is what they would dump into any system collecting credit card numbers.

JN Illinois

Good idea, but how many of us are willing to go through with the expense and embarrassment of being hauled into a court of law just to make a DA blush? And what happens if the jury has no sense of humor? Because we’re not especially fond of credit card fraud, we have no objection to people posting whatever num- bers come into their heads or even random computer-generated numbers. That way, the criminals are confused, the authorities are confused, and democracy is safe for a little while longer.

Dear 2600: One bright day last March, a week after my 16th birthday, I came

home to discover that the cops had raided my room and taken every- thing — computer, printer, modem, monitor, 350 disks, but left the Apple IIc power pack. Among those 300 disks were about 20 phreak/ hack disks, 300 pirated programs, and a number of personal disks. MCI had caught me hacking out codes and put a Dialed Number Recorder on my line. They had followed all my calls for a month and

a half. My first meetings with probation and lawyers scared me to death. I

was informally threatened with going to juve, having to pay immense fines, never getting any of my stuff back, etc. The next two months of waiting for my trial were hell. I was originally charged with nine

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

counts of various crimes including phone fraud, accessing of MCI’s computer, and annoying phone calls (exchange hacking).

As it turned out, I used a county lawyer and ended up paying nothing for his services. I got off on most of the counts and had to pay a fine of $479.32, $29 of which were phone bills and the rest were “service charges” of having to switch the 22 codes I used. I also had to serve

80 hours of community service and remain on probation until these items were done.

I got all of my computer stuff back minus 11 disks of phreak/hack stuff (they missed quite a few). I did pay the fine, which was a hell of a lot less than what it should have been. I actually completed about 15 hours of community service but my probation officer was easily deceived.

I just got off probation last week and all in all I’ve got to say it was well worth it. I wrote to give you my account of being caught and what the end resolution was (not very harsh). I do hope that none of you have to go through what I did in those first two months.

The Sultan Getting caught at something illegal is never “worth it” unless it’s something you

really believe in or something you can erase later. And if you brag about this to lots of people, you’ll probably find yourself reliving history. Keep us posted. We care.

Dear 2600: In the July 1984 issue of 2600, Quasi Moto, sysop of the late Plover-