224 DEAR HACKER
224 DEAR HACKER
The advertising at the Sprint booth mentioned only the FON card, and said nothing about changing long distance carriers. When I asked the woman about getting the FON card, she gave me an application to fill out. But before I signed it, I noticed in the fine print that I was agreeing to change my long distance carrier to Sprint.
I asked the woman if I had read the application right. She at first said no, I was applying for the FON card only. When pressed, however, she finally admitted it, saying, “Well, wouldn’t you rather have Sprint?” Only when I declined did she turn the form over, where there was another application for the FON card only.
Needless to say, you know which form was face up on the table, and which form you were told to fill out when you asked for the FON card. It’s impossible to tell who the perpetrators were: Network 2000 or their reps.
The Iron Warrior No Fixed Address
Dear 2600:
I think you might find this interesting. It was extracted from the RISKS Digest on Usenet.
“The Prodigy Services publication Prodigy Star (Volume 3, Number 1) recently showcased a ‘major benefit.’ The Prodigy system accesses remote subscribers’ disks to check the Prodigy software version used and, when necessary, downloads the lat- est programs. This process is automatic when subscribers link to the network.
“I asked Prodigy how they protect against the possibility of altering subscribers’ non-Prodigy programs, or reading their personal data. Prodigy’s less-than-reassuring response was es- sentially (1) we don’t look at other programs, and (2) you can boot from a floppy disk. According to Prodigy, the feature can- not be disabled.”
I think it is obvious how to make use of this “ feature” for other pur- poses. Let us hope that this “ feature” is removed from one of the newly downloaded versions....
T H E M A G I C O F T H E C O R P O R AT E W O R L D
Dear 2600: You’ve been duped! Your article in your Summer 1990 issue entitled
“An Introduction to COCOTs” was either (a) written by a represen- tative of one of the local exchange carriers or (b) your writer (The Plague) has been receiving some awfully poor information regarding the pay telephone industry.
The real pay telephone rip-offs are not the independent pay telephone companies, most of which are small, independent businesspeople such as ourselves. The real rip-offs are the major local exchange carriers who subsidize their pay telephone operations with regular telephone revenues. Every one of us pays extra in the form of higher local tele- phone bills to support the LEC’s inefficient, unresponsive pay tele- phone bureaucracy. Why should your home and business telephone charges support your LEC’s operations?
This is not to say that there haven’t been abuses in our industry. But the vast majority of us deserve better than you’ve shown us. Your article plays right into the monopolistic LEC’s hands, who would like nothing better than to eliminate all competition and return to the days of total uncontrolled monopoly.
R.S. Grucz Executive Vice President American Public Telephone Corporation
It only takes a few rip-off COCOTs to give the entire industry a bad name. We think it’s important to clearly label those companies that are engaged in ripping off the public. You should do the same and disavow yourself of those companies. There need to be some basic standards introduced (equal access, 950 access, clear rate structure, etc.). We hope to hear more from your perspective and we encourage our readers to tell us if they’ve had any positive experiences with COCOTs and AOS companies.