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Phone Losers of America

The Phone Losers of America (PLA) is an American phreaking group founded in the 1990s, active on the hacking scene. The PLA e-zine was first written in 1990, and the official web site went up in 1994. It has ranked at the top of Alexa's "Prank Call" category.

History

The Phone Losers of America has a history spanning more than 10 years. While the PLA didn't actually exist until 1994, the ideas and articles which were brought to the PLA began in 1992. By 1995, PLA became very well-known in the computer underground for their odd contributions to the text zine scene. Most hacker and phreak related bulletin board systems carried the series of PLA text files.

The PLA text files continued until mid-1997, when RBCP suddenly put an end to them. Though the text files ended, the PLA never slowed down. Their website continued to flourish, PLA TV was born, and several prank call CDs were released. The PLA community continued to grow on IRC and on the various PLA Forums. In 2002, RBCP began an internet radio station which he called PLA Radio which still exists today. (PLA History, 2008)

The e-zine

The PLA e-zine was originally distributed electronically via a dial-up BBS, with an option to buy the magazine and have it shipped by mail. It is not recommended that anyone follow any instructions in any article, since for the most part, the humorous antics (such as Phone fraud) are illegal.

Listed below are the six most read issues, along with short summaries. The author of the e-zine, Brad Carter, also goes by the aliases "RBCP" and "Alex", the latter being his middle name. He currently lives in Albany, Oregon.

Issue #1: Hacking a WWIV BBS

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The first issue is a parody of the common "how-to-hack" articles being distributed at that time. The humor in this article is that the word "hack" refers to an axe, and that the seemingly absurd methods to gain access to a WWIV BBS did not exceed the difficulty of actually breaking into such a system (although there are no files on how to break into the WWIV BBS).

Issue #2: Building Your Own Red Box

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In the second issue, RBCP shows how one can modify a Radio Shack "tone dialer", originally meant to give rotary phones the ability to use DTMF ("Touch-Tone"), to generate the correct frequencies to emulate a red box. From the first "red boxing" text file up to the early 1990s, the only way to make a red box was to wire one from scratch using circuit schematics. This incredibly simple hack allowed people with little or no knowledge in circuitry to manufacture their own toll fraud device.

Radio Shack has since discontinued the original tone dialer that was most used in the modification to red boxes, though many retailers still carry it.

Issue #3: Revenge

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This issue frequently finds itself into Internet discussions in response to a person seeking revenge. The methods in this article are written with incredible detail, which include:

Canceling a person's credit cards.
Forwarding a person's phone number.
Putting enticing yet fake For Sale/For Rent classifieds in the local newspaper.
Reporting a person in response to "unknown suspects" listed in the police blotter.
Rewiring a person's car to trigger the horn whenever the brakes are applied.

Issue #14: Cordless Phone Hell

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The first "victim" of the PLA, Dino Allsman, is repeatedly harassed using a radio scanner and transmitter to interfere with his cordless phone. Most cordless telephones on the market today have some form of encryption mechanism to prevent people from doing what is done in this issue.

Issue #19: Fun with Call Forwarding

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The telephone service known as Call Forwarding is explained in detail in this issue, along with methods of ordering it discreetly and passing the costs to someone else. Ways to set up a teleconference are also touched upon, along with ways to divert the costs to another phone line.

Issue #24: Dabbling in Credit Card Fraud

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This issue describes how the author would go about getting credit card numbers, along with how to cover up one's tracks when committing credit card fraud. The author, however, was eventually caught and forced to pay restitution and serve a short jail sentence. To this day, though, people do refer to this issue, and the author has even gotten e-mails from Nigerian 419 scammers asking him for advice (and even credit card numbers).

Phone Mobbing

Phone mobbing is the act of having a large group of people continuously call the same phone number or group of phone numbers in an attempt to harass the called party.

Self-professed members of the PLA have targeted large media groups, including Loveline on MTV.(PLA's Phone Mobbing page, 2008)

On 1 January 2007, Brad Carter a residence of Albany, Oregon released the 13th episode of PLA Radio (Episode 13, 2006), being titled Phone Mobbing and devoted completely to that. On 15 March 2008, he released PLA Radio episode 16, which also contained more phone mobbing footage. (Episode 16, 2008)

PLA Radio

In early 2006, RBCP started releasing almost-monthly audio comedy shows called PLA Radio The shows features comedy skits, commercials, parodies and lots of pranks. The show is released as a podcast and has been featured several times on iTunes and is regularly listed in the Top 10 on Podcast Alley. Some of the names used, like Chris Tomkinson and cactus, are inside jokes for the PLA's dedicated followers. Episodes are released sporadically, sometimes occurring monthly and sometimes only happening a few times a year. (PLA Radio, 2008)

PLA TV

Since canceling the PLA zine, RBCP has been regularly releasing short videos, usually revolving around various pranks that him and friends have pulled. Most of the earlier episodes feature RBCP and EvilCal, which includes the legendary Adventures of Elephant and Bird. RBCP still releases videos today, the most recent episodes revolving around modifying a toaster to broadcast on drive-thru frequencies and getting back at the religious people who constantly show up at his door. You can watch most of the PLA TV episodes on YouTube, which are linked from the PLA TV website.

PLA Voice Bridge

The PLA hosts a voice bridge This bridge was previously hosted at on the same extension but the provider changed phone numbers. There are daily conferences from 8pm to 12am EST. The voice bridge is very active during this time, with many people talking and background noise such as soundboards (which many users frown on). The bridge is also a popular place for Telephone Relay Service operators to gather.

A very small number of international enthusiasts have expressed support for an alternative meeting time to allow them to join the fun. (Currently the 8pm to 12am EST schedule occurs in the middle of the night for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia). There has been no official or unofficial secondary meeting time chosen as of March 2007. Most international participants make due with listening in for a short time very late at night or very early in the morning.

Occasionally, a user will create a "secret 800 number" which, when called, would forward to the voice bridge. This was usually accomplished by some method of theft of the toll-free 800 service, and is never officially sanctioned by PLA. PLA's Voice Bridge Page

PLA Community Forums

The Phone Losers web site has always had some kind of forums on their website. In 1997 they used WebForums which were continually attacked by backers of the rival Boulder News Forums. In 1998 and 1999, RBCP used his own forum software in Perl, called FruitWare These were closed in February 1999 due to abuse.

The site remained without forums for the next couple of years, but communicated with each other on the PLA Email List In 2002, EvilCal took over by creating Cal's Forums which lasted until he shut them down in April 2006, setting up Cal's Content Kingdom in its place.

Today, the PLA community forums are administrated by RBCP, and were established on 03-21-2006. There are currently over 530 registered users, but only about 60 are active users, creating approximately 30 posts per day on topics mostly related to the PLA. PLA Forums

Tenth Anniversary

The PLA celebrated their 10th anniversary in 2004. While some of the textfiles show dates as early as 1991, RBCP claims the PLA as its current incarnation didn't fully exist until 1994. Several members of Cal's Forums put their heads together to find a way to celebrate the anniversary in a unique way. Rob Vincent aka Rob T Firefly, Judas Iscariot, Big-E, Liife, I-BaLL, and Murd0c headed up a panel at The Fifth H.O.P.E. conference.

The panel occurred July 9th, 2004 at 11pm and was seen by over 800 people in the audience and countless more via streaming media from 2600. Widely regarded as a success, the group played prank videos, held impromptu question and answer sessions, played recordings of prank calls, and nearly caused a riot when giving away free PLA Media CDs. All of the attention caused mentions in USA Today, Wired and The New York Post. There were also problems when RBCP suggested that Cal (the webmaster of the PLA forums) was planning a hostile takeover of the PLA. Many agreed with this RBCP theory, and many expressed their support when he led a crusade against Cal. But some said RBCP had gone "off his rocker", and was making unfounded threats. The Phone Losers were divided until April of 2006, when it was announced that they would lay their differences aside and concentrate instead on pranking people and trying to find the "the original spark that united the PLA". (PLA Website Update, 2004)

A second PLA panel is scheduled for July 19th, 2008 at 11pm at The Last H.O.P.E.. The presentation is said to include a full multimedia work up of the new pranks the PLA has pulled in the four years since the previous panel, question and answers and live pranks at the hotel. Returning speakers include Murd0c, Rob T. Firefly, I-BaLL and Sidepocket.

Cactus

A "Cactus" has become the PLA's mascot, as well as catchphrase. The origin of the word dates back to an old prank call by RBCP, where he would say nothing but the word "cactus," over and over. In common usage, It can be stated with a question mark "Cactus?" or as an exclamation "Cactus!" Similar "Cactus" themed prank calls are often made by PLA members. (PLA issue #35, 1995)

Press

The PLA has regularly received a fair amount of attention from the media, beginning with a front page article in the Sunday issue of the Belleville News Democrat on September 3rd, 1995. (PLA Issue #35, 1995) An editorial was written several days later, followed by another front page article on the PLA a week later. (PLA Issue #38, 1995)

The website and zine received regular writeups in computer magazines such as The Net, The Web and Internet Underground throughout the 1990s. (PLA's press page, 2008) PLA received national attention in 2002, through a segment on Tech TV (YouTube, 2008) and then once again in 2005 when RBCP was interviewed live via satellite on CNBC's On The Money. (YouTube, 2008) PLA was also interviewed in 2005 for an article about Wal-Mart in the Boston Herald. (PLA's press page, 2008)

United Phone Losers; a PLA Spin-Off

In 1998, Southern California phone phreak "linear" [sic] created a spin-off group of the PLA, and dubbed it the United Phone Losers. Though the group reportedly started as a joke, they picked up momentum when RBCP of the PLA recognized the UPL and asked them to take over the now-defunct PLA Telephone Director0y (later renamed the UPL/PLA Telephone Director0y), a comprehensive list of interesting and/or humorous telephone numbers.

The UPL had a popular message board forum and released 28 issues of its own ezine. The ezine was actively published until 2002. They did continue to host their website, however, and actively maintained their message board and archived ezine and site content until 2004, when the website, http://www.phonelosers.net, was "domain sniped" by cybersquatters. Reclaiming the domain was initially decided against due to the group members' declining interest in continuing the project and focus shifts to other projects and aspects of their lives. However, more recently in 2008, the group and the website have returned (see below).

In 2005, RBCP of the PLA compiled all 28 issues of the defunct UPL ezine and hosted them on the PLA website, stating "So now the tables have turned - the PLA is stealing all of the UPL's material and putting it on their site. This page is a homeage [sic] to the old UPL site and is a complete archive of the UPL issues."

Shortly thereafter, RBCP released an "unauthorized" 29th issue of the United Phone Losers ezine, explaining what happened to the old UPL website as well as including previously unreleased material.

In 2006, linear gained back domain registration of phonelosers.net once the former cybersquatters lost interest and let their registration expire. The site sat still as a archive of the old UPL issues until March 2008 when linear announced that the site and the group had returned and would become active once more.

In June 2008, linear "hacked" PLA Radio and released an "unauthorized" episode with cohost bex0. The episode explained that the take-over was retalliation against RBCP for releasing the issue #29 of the United Phone Losers ezine.