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Comment by notRobot | Hacker News Reader

This was a lot of fun! I've definitely done the PHP spoof haha, if I can find the code I'll link it here.

However, last I checked, those email-to-SMS gateways were shut down to prevent spam :(

Dunno how old you are but back in the analog cellphone days I had my mom's clunky old flip phone lying around, I was 14 or so and followed some instructions off a BBS. If you put a piece of tin foil between two of the battery contacts you could get the phone into debug mode and you could punch in any channel number and just listen in on it. I lived near a freeway, so I would spend hours in the backyard eavesdropping on people's conversations as they drove by and faded in and out of range. You had to be quiet, because if they were close enough to pick up your signal they could hear you too. Dudes arguing with their wives, drug deals, it was quite an education. The shortwave radio receiver my parents bought me as a birthday present gathered dust in the closet.

reminds me of my antics

I used to use the radio to to pick up cordless phones (ie a normal phone with a base station, with the huge phones with big antennas), AM if I rememeber rightly, right towards one end of the dial

this kept me entertained for far too long for an 8-10 year old..

That is a life-changing hack right there! Reminds me of an old glitch I experienced in the early Nokias that allowed the receiver of a call to listen-in on the line before answering.

> Reminds me of an old glitch I experienced in the early Nokias that allowed the receiver of a call to listen-in on the line before answering.

Do you happen to remember the model of that Nokia? I had a guy in high school show this to me once, but nobody believed me when I told them! I knew I wasn't crazy haha

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