It Could Happen To You!


   A bizarre story is unfolding in New York City, one which typifies both
hacker ingenuity and corporate indifference to the average customer.

   It all started when Hacker A met Hacker B on a loop somewhere. At first,
they got along quite well, exchanging all kinds of information. Over time,
however, Hacker B got more and more obsessed, while Hacker A wanted to get on
with a normal life. B would not stop calling A, which led A to tell B that if
he didn't stop bothering him, he would get the authorities on his case. Well,
B didn't and A did. And that's where the trouble really started.

   For the last couple of years, almost every few minutes, A's phone has been
ringing. At the other end is B or someone or something that B has programmed.
Sometimes nothing is said; sometimes a threat is uttered; sometimes the caller
just laughs. A and his family have been trying, literally for years, to put an
end to this. At first they simply changed the number to an unlisted one.
Within an hour, B had found the new one. So they tried to change it again.
New York Telephone refused. Either they would have to pay an exorbitant fee
this time, or the number would not be changed. They said it was impossible for
somebody to find out their number so fast - he must have been told by somebody
in the family.

   This scene was repeated a number of times, with A's family changing their
number practically a dozen times and having to pay the fee for most of them.
It reached the point where B would call them BEFORE they received their new
number to tell them what the new number would be.

   This wasn't all. B had also managed to charge outrageous amounts to the
family's phone bill. He would call their answering machine collect on a long
distance trunk and make it sound to the operator as though he'd said "yes".
then he'd leave the connection open for hours. He also managed to place third
party calls, using their number as the billing number. Their bill was
outrageous and the phone company insisted that they were responsible for it.
Their service was disconnected and today they are slowly paying back the huge
debt.

   Meanwhile, A has tried to get the authorities to look at B (whose address
and phone number he has), with only lukewarm interest. The FBI says it has
an eye on him, but won't help A deal with the phone company.

   To this day it continues. The calls keep coming and A is powerless to do
anything. B knows the phone system like the back of his hand and he can make
it do almost anything. The phone company does not want to admit this and, on
many levels, isincapable of understanding it themselves. The result: an
innocent victim gets it from both ends.

2600 Magazine, Volume 3, Number 2, February 1986