Tastech

Hi we were working at a site and were bored waiting to continue other contractors were holding us up ,
One guy wandered to the telstra phone box and saw it had a number listed but with i think one number replaced with an x he decided to try and ring the phone box tried numerous combinations no go.
later we were told that street phone boxes dont ring or have there ringer diconnected and we should have taken phone off hook and tried for an engaged signal .
I know it was a long day any answers

rob916

ma**anet used to list them

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Studio1

Dunno what your phones are like there but here, the payphones are owned and maintained by Telecom, and generally have the actual phone number displayed on an information display card near the phone.

Normally it is the format of "93478241" where "9" is the area code and 3478241 is the actual phone line number.
If you dial the number, the phone will in fact ring - but a message comes up on the display - "Sorry, this phone cannot accept incoming calls" and if you pick up the receiver, it just keeps on ringing.

I really have NO idea why Telecom have programmed them in this way. What harm could come from the phone being able to take an incoming call?

Reminds me of many years ago, before we had cardphones. I was walking along the street in town one day and heard a payphone ringing. I went over to it and picked it up. A voice on the other end said "Who is that?" I said "Who are you?"
They said "This is such and such from Telecom security here. Are there any kids playing around near that phone?"
I looked around and couldn't see any.
"We've had someone dialling prank calls from that phone" said the voice on the other end.

So, it just goes to show, Telecom can do whatever they like with the system.
I am led to believe that there are various "Service" numbers that can be used on these phones. They are in the order of 12 or more digits long, but allow access to the open exchange - ie you can make toll calls at no cost and get into the computer system that controls the phones.

The very same computer that knows if the phone has been tampered with or someone is trying to smash it off the wall

urban_s0ulja

captain crunch anyone?

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trash

The numbers on Australian public phones don't resemble their number in any way. The first four digits of the phone number are representative of the area/exchange code, but even these digits may not be the same because some exchanges have more than one prefix.

In Australia they do have a ringger and you can ring into them.
given that eac prefix has 10000 numbers and there are about 3 prefixes on most exchanges, you're going to rack up quite a phone bill tryig to find the number. I've not encountered any with the ringer disabled, but I wouldn't be supprised if they were.

As kids we used to ring up the 199 ringback test number, make the phone ring and run away. The 123 ident number would not give the box number.
Not that there weren't ways of getting the number when phone CDs first came out.

Antennaman

I used to know the number of my local payphone before it was removed, from a long time ago when the 19123 number used to work, and on dialling it I think the display used to show "out of service please wait" or something to that effect. There was no sounder coming from the payphone, and after about 10 rings, a modem would answer.

That makes sense, I guess, the phone can then either call to report faults, eg coin tin full, or can be called to be programmed remotely, eg for amendments to charging rates.

The 'phone was removed, iirc, because of continuing vandalism, or more likely that it wasn't paying its way.

One of the reasons I reckon they canned the 19123 number on payphones was because of the dickhead radio stations that used to ring the payphones when the jolly green giants were around, and put the answerers to air for that particular staions own immature satisfaction.

AussieM8

I don't think they answer propertly, but here is an old database you could try.
ToxicAntidote -- Payphone search

SystemRat

Many years ago it was the height of good fun to dial 199 on a pay phone which was the ring back number and stand clear and watch the reaction of passersby. 199 does not work anymore and I “think” they have disabled the ringer on most pay phones too. There were a few lists of pay phone numbers on the net years ago too with their location so you could call them and talk to I know not who that happened to be waiting for a train on platform 2 or whatever.

highway

Good little trick for those with access to the telstra FAST test. Cannot dial the 1800 number for fast from a payphone, but dialing all digits bar the last one, the press follow-on, redial and the last digit makes the connection. Enter the tech id and password, then select test the line in use - instant readback of the phone number to be tested. Dont have access to FAST anymore, so please dont ask for the tech id and pin

Tastech

Thanks dude just what my mates after

Tacnal

You can still do a payhone search on ma****et.

BillyGoat

Ok whats ma****et? Anyone?

weirdo

Yeah can we buy some vowels?

trash

I'm still stuck on "propertly".

rob916

informationisfreeforyouandme dot com
enjoy

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SWK

I really have NO idea why Telecom have programmed them in this way. What harm could come from the phone being able to take an incoming call?

IDD Reverse calls come to mind, the os operator would not have any idea that the call is going to a payphone.

SWK

Studio1

Haha! Now there's a scam I hadn't thought of ... LOL

trash

You can't do that anymore of Australian phones. That scam was closed a few years ago.
Sorry to say boys, you missed the goldern age of phone phreaking in this country. Not that there aren't still a few things left for skript kiddies to play with.

Find yourself a copy of the old 'hackers cronicals' and read back to the 80's.
You'll be amazed at what used to be possible. Not that it was ever possible in this country, but "Blue Boxing" is where you would start looking and follow the trail from there.
Try alt.2600 2600: The Hacker Quarterly

nifty

[quote=trash;93013]You can't do that anymore of Australian phones. That scam was closed a few years ago.
Sorry to say boys, you missed the goldern age of phone phreaking in this country. Not that there aren't still a few things left for skript kiddies to play with.

The Yanks were pretty dumb also. In the 1990s I could ring Australia from a US call phone and feed in (i think) about $10 in quarters for the first three minutes. I could then keep talking for as long as I liked after the three minutes was up. On hanging up the phone would ring and a computer voice would say " Please insert $325.50" Yeah...........

Nifty

Studio1

OMG.. only in America

Reminds me of when ATMs first appeared here. A kid got an empty Smarties packet (a type of confectionary in case you haven't heard of them in Oz) and he did a "deposit" at the ATM, using the empty packet. He told the machine he'd just deposited $1000, and immediately afterwards, did a withdrawal of $1000 - the machine believing that his account had just been incremented by a grand.

Needless to say the security flaw was plugged real quick