Phreakers playing with phone bills?

Obo

Saw this on sky news earlier and thought it was funny. Phreakers playing in the network?

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13113270,00.html

VILLAGE SEX LINES MYSTERY

A sleepy village is thought to be being plagued by a phantom phone caller who is hiking up residents' bills by calling premium rate sex lines.
Eighteen houses in the hamlet of New Green in Essex have received bills listing calls to services ranging from gay porn chat lines to information hotlines. The total cost of the calls is £1,500.

In each case the calls were made between midnight and 3am on May 12 and 17, according to the Daily Mail.
Residents said the calls initially caused a lot of trouble, with couples arguing and accusing their children of dialling the numbers.

It was only when word spread around the village that several households had been hit that residents suspected a BT fault, or foul play.
One resident, Stephen Woodcraft, 53, who was charged £113 for calls, said: "The bills have caused a lot of grief. A number of households have fallen out quite badly, with wives accusing husbands and kids getting the blame."

Most of the households have complained to BT, which has insisted that a fault is probably not to blame.
A spokesman said: "It is unlikely this has been caused by a glitch, but we need a full investigation."

Bill Mierans, of the Telecommunications Users' Association, said it was possible that someone using the right technology could tamper with street exchange boxes to tap into other people's phone lines.

Obo

Doh! Wrong forum. Was supposed to be security.
Sorry

spongebob

Probably all have DECT phones, the phreaker managed to register a set with their base stations and make the call and then deregister them afterwards.

M

theciscokid

Originally posted by Muck
Probably all have DECT phones, the phreaker managed to register a set with their base stations and make the call and then deregister them afterwards.

M

Highly unlikely, probabaly beige boxing the lines late at night from the local pcp boxes on the street or maybe they're just dialing into the switches

spongebob

There have been rumours about a scam involving Eircom Band 13 numbers (super premium numbers at €3.61 a minute day/night/weekend and no call limit) which is being run from Dublin and in Dublin.

Eircom keep most of the money , the scammers make a tenth of what Eircom themselves make.

M