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From: ins_atge@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Thomas G Edwards)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: free calls?
Summary: Phreak? Me? Never!
Message-ID: <6049@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 7 Aug 90 20:44:17 GMT
References: <26438@usc.edu>
Reply-To: ins_atge@jhunix.UUCP (Thomas G Edwards)
Distribution: na
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University - HCF
Lines: 23

In article <26438@usc.edu> robiner@oberon.usc.edu writes:
(about making free calls from payphones using the handset grounding method)

>Matthew Broderick pulled this scam in the movie "War Games" but I don't 
>know if it works in the real world.  MOst pay phones have glued, or locked,
>or sealed mouth peices anyway, so it'd be very difficult (and illegal)
>to try tampering with them.

At least it worked when I was in high school (I'm a nice boy now :-)
Actually, in my area there were no unscrewable handsets in payphones.
The speaker actually was protected by a piece of metal.  To properly do
it, one had to hammer a nail through the metal protector, and then use
a paper clip to connect the speaker to the metal case of the payphone.
And you had to do it at the proper times while dialing.  One could always
tell phones which were used in this manner by the tell-tale
enlarged hole in the plastic over the speaker.

I do not understand why it works...perhaps something to do with
ground-loop start, but then how can the payphone work without 
red box tones (i.e. nickel tones?)...it must also do something to the
payphone.

-Tom