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Child Item

Illegal or immoral things you used to do that technology put a stop to

Svetti Arss

In the early 80's a school friend of mine and his family emigrated to America.

Phone calls back then where mad expensive so I came up with a cunning plan :cool: to allow us to talk on the phone at no expense. It worked like this; At a pre-arranged time he would ask the operator in the states to make a reverse charge call to a local phone box . We would answer and of course accept the charges. This went on for years until the family was deported back to Ireland.

Some time later the pips where added to public phones to alert an operator that they where calling a pay phone and that was the end of it.

Any more examples?

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wonderfulname

Some legal download sites used to give you a preview of tracks on windows media, so long as you finished copying the file before it played out you got it free, that ended around 2005.
I got a free 24 pack of fanta for ringing the customer hotline and complaining I bought a flat bottle - cue half an hour of shaking the crap out of the bottle after being told a rep would be with me the next day. As far as I know you can still do that though.
Technology put a stop to my free Dart trips. Irish rail realising said technology was flawed and using people to do its job put an end to my cheap student tickets.

Stinicker

On Sky tv a few years ago if you connected the phoneline to a 9v battery instead of a telephone line you could order PPV without paying as the skybox was tricked into thinking it was phoning home the order when it detected the current on the dialup modem.

Of course you could only order whatever limit was preset on your sky card (smart people made this unlimited before using the hack!) and if you ever reconnected the telephone line again you would get charged.

As a precocious teen with only crappy dial-up for the internet I had not yet heard of downloading!! Alas I was disappointed at the PPV porno on offer and soon realised that Sky films were pure crap; both blue and mainstream!! A few weeks later my mother was hovering and plugged in the phone to the sky box..... that took a bit of explaining and I managed to blame my friend for it, as we were about 15-16 at the time!!

Another time about 8-10 years ago I managed to setup call diversion on a pay phone so it diverted it to my GF's mobile thus saving me a tonne ringing her!! However she started getting weird calls from junkies who used that as their number

Shelflife

You could tap a number into the old payphones and get free calls.

beaten to it by rtth.

Run_to_da_hills

In the 90's older Australian payphones could be hacked by using the high tension spark from a Barbique lighter. Handy for calling home.

A&B phones in Ireland could be hacked by tapping the receiver button where you placed the handset in place of dialing. You could still dial 9, 1 and 0.

johndaman66

cocoshovel wrote: »

Does anybody remember when you used to get a mouldy bag of tayto's or something wrong with a bought food item and you used to write a complaint to the company, then they would send out an apology card and a box of roses or something. Im pretty sure we did that more than a few times, I doubt it would work anymore.

You might be very shocked and pleasantly surprised. Only about a year or maybe fifteen months ago brother had a pack of Jacobs chocolate Polo biscuits that were chocolated on the incorrect side. Absolutely nothing else wrong with them besides. They were yummy as you would expect with Jacobs chocolate polo biscuits. Eventually with some persuasion he got me to write a letter of complaint to them (why he diddn't write it himself I'm still uncertain) and included a sample of the biscuit. A lot of bullsh!t went into the letter really...How I had neighbours around for afternoon tea and was totally afronted and ashamed when I had seen their error. Letter stayed in my car for a few days before I thought about posting it. By the time I actually posted it part of the envelope had gone brown from the melted chocolate.

Low and behold and fair play to Jacobs Fruitfield but maybe a month or six weeks later a parcel of about 8 assorted packs of Jacobs biscuits and an apology letter arrived through the post.

johndaman66

ClutchIt wrote: »

I was more gullible than you and actually tried this. It was bullsh!t.

Probably not, it was just I never smoked. Would more than likely have tried at some stage if I had, but then again I probably would have being smoking as a toddler if I was smoking at the time of the earliest machines! Over the years I have become very very cynical of stories spun to me by randomers in pubs.

the_syco

Tea_Bag wrote: »

back then, if you changed your "messaging centre" number to the number used in kenya for their MTN network, you'd get free texts. this went on for months, and whenever it stopped working, we'd find a new number that would work.

Aye, did that over here in Ireland as well.

Tea_Bag

i grew up in south africa, and my friend and i pioneered free texts (at least in the town we grew up anyway)
back then, if you changed your "messaging centre" number to the number used in kenya for their MTN network, you'd get free texts. this went on for months, and whenever it stopped working, we'd find a new number that would work.

also, mobile internet used to be free(never advertised though, and it would take some time to get it working with all the settings) (gprs was awefully slow though), but we managed to find tiny java apps to text/email each other. we stumbled across mxit (almost like msn messanger), being the best of the bunch, and we eventually got our whole school using it. when the free texts and internet stopped working, mxit would only cost a tenth of the price of a normal text.

MXit is now MASSIVE in south africa, and we were using it back in 2003 (and others before it)

Hobbes

Pete M. wrote: »

Using the old 5p coins when on a school tour to Germany instead of Deutshmarks in the vending machines.

One of my cousins was living in Germany at the time and his mate came over with a bag of 5p coins for the vending machines. He got caught as they were the only two Irish people in the village.

Capt'n Midnight

jackiebaron wrote: »

There was also a time when corrupt bus conductors would take 20p, pocket it and give you no ticket instead of you paying the 40p and getting a legit ticket. Of course the beloved conductor is a thing of the past now.

Making the rent , as it was called.

newmug

jackiebaron wrote: »

Not very business inclined are you?

That sounds very capitalist of you!;)

jackiebaron

listermint wrote: »

Ewe, who the hell wants a 1/2 a van of marmalade.. barf.

Not very business inclined are you?

listermint

Svetti Arss wrote: »

Or throw a wasp in a jar of Fruitfield Old Time Coarse Irish Marmalade and wait for the rep to call and be left with 1/2 a van load of jam. Those reps where a powerful lot. My mother used to clean the house from top to bottom when one was on the way.

Nowadays you just bring it back you where you bought it or return it using "freepost":( and get your money back or a scabby voucher. Probably saved a lot of wasp lives i suppose.

Ewe, who the hell wants a 1/2 a van of marmalade.. barf.

Svetti Arss

cocoshovel wrote: »

Does anybody remember when you used to get a mouldy bag of tayto's or something wrong with a bought food item and you used to write a complaint to the company, then they would send out an apology card and a box of roses or something. Im pretty sure we did that more than a few times, I doubt it would work anymore.

Mmmm so many roses.

Or throw a wasp in a jar of Fruitfield Old Time Coarse Irish Marmalade and wait for the rep to call and be left with 1/2 a van load of jam. Those reps where a powerful lot. My mother used to clean the house from top to bottom when one was on the way.

Nowadays you just bring it back you where you bought it or return it using "freepost":( and get your money back or a scabby voucher. Probably saved a lot of wasp lives i suppose.

superelliptic

tony1kenobi wrote: »

I was an orderly in a mental hospital and I used to drug and rape one patient,Sarah Connor,until the terminator came from the future and murdered me.The prick.

stupidusername

cocoshovel wrote: »

Does anybody remember when you used to get a mouldy bag of tayto's or something wrong with a bought food item and you used to write a complaint to the company, then they would send out an apology card and a box of roses or something. Im pretty sure we did that more than a few times, I doubt it would work anymore.

Mmmm so many roses.

ya i remember once my mam had a bit of nut in her dairy milk, i wrote to cadbury saying she was allergic to them and they're not meant to be in them, and they sent back a package full of chocolate. \o/

Ya, I'm pretty sure I'm responsible for them writing 'may contain nut traces' on just about everything nowadays :cool:

Orando Broom

tony1kenobi wrote: »

I was an orderly in a mental hospital and I used to drug and rape one patient,Sarah Connor,until the terminator came from the future and murdered me.The prick.

Did you not just lick her like a fat lad tackling a 99?

cocoshovel

Does anybody remember when you used to get a mouldy bag of tayto's or something wrong with a bought food item and you used to write a complaint to the company, then they would send out an apology card and a box of roses or something. Im pretty sure we did that more than a few times, I doubt it would work anymore.

Mmmm so many roses.

stovelid

AnonoBoy wrote: »

Phone rape?

The slot was murder.

Sausage grinder comes to mind.

MarkD.

Driving about 5 or 10mph over the speed limit, not going so fast that you were not in control but now on most roads speed camera vans are there.

Also now if your tax was out for a little while, say a month due to being short a few pound you used get away with it, now number plate recognision systems in Garda cars will nab you straight away. Its a tough world!

sbsquarepants

When the self scan checkouts appeared in tesco, i learned quite by accident that when scanning beer, there are dedicated 6 pack barcodes and then there are the ones from trays which scan as 6 individuals. I made off with about 500 cans of beer over the next few months, but they're bang wide to it now!:mad:

Also when intel pentium chips came out first, a friend used to work repairing boards for intel, for some reason they didn't reuse the chip it was supposed to be destroyed. Cue him robbing them and me selling them on, made money like drug dealers for a couple of months till they changed the design making them too big to rob. Easy money!!

AnonoBoy

jackiebaron wrote: »

Also when Banklink machines first came in they weren't that efficient. You could have twenty quid in your bank account, go into the bank, fill out a slip to withdraw. Then go out side and withdraw it again from the wall. They didn't update your balance immediately.

You can still do that. If you're BOI then use an AIB ATM and it will let you take out more than you have. Paid for manys the night out in college did that trick!

Weighing your own fruit and veg at the supermarket then printing the ticket and then throwing a few more carrots or apples into the bag was a fave. Now they're weighed at the checkout.

Lots of places still get you to weigh it yourself. Shopping around is a thieving bast*rd's best friend.

stovelid wrote: »

I used to abuse my mother's phone so badly she got a coin-op one installed.

Phone rape?

ClutchIt

johndaman66 wrote: »

On this subject I remember a wise old man telling me in a pub once it was possible to fool the early cigarrette machines by drilling a very tiny hole in a coin and tieing a piece of very light string to it...Continuiously dropping coin into machine and with-drawing it. Dunno how true it is, I've learned over the years that a lot of what you hear in the pub is fairytale bullsh!t.

I was more gullible than you and actually tried this. It was bullsh!t. I was too young to realise people in pubs talk a lot of nonsense. When you tried to pull it back out the coin would get caught on something and it was impossible to withdraw it again.

stovelid

I used to abuse my mother's phone so badly she got a coin-op one installed.

danniemcq

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

mm

needs more tentacles

and crush kittens

mrsdewinter

Thanks, Jackie - that's quite a comprehensive list. I was going to post the "tapping" phone hack thing. Knew a girl who used to ring her sister in Boston for free on the back of it. Of course, when Telecom Eireann rumbled the scam, they never bothered telling anybody... Cue, the arrival of massive telephone bill and huge rows about who the hell wd be foolish enough to be ringing the States on a practically daily basis... Ah, rows with the folks over telephone bills... It's like a different world.

Irish Guitarist

I used to be able to record programmes onto a video tape. Now my DVD recorder has copy control technology to stop me recording certain programmes from Sky +.

Tar.Aldarion

AskMyChocolate wrote: »

Garter belts and suspenders. I thought they only existed in my sick little mind. I used to think I was a complete pervert. With the advent of the internet, it turns out I'm a bit of a prude.

mm

needs more tentacles

AskMyChocolate

Garter belts and suspenders. I thought they only existed in my sick little mind. I used to think I was a complete pervert. With the advent of the internet, it turns out I'm a bit of a prude.

jackiebaron

Svetti Arss wrote: »

In the early 80's a school friend of mine and his family emigrated to America.

Phone calls back then where mad expensive so I came up with a cunning plan :cool: to allow us to talk on the phone at no expense. It worked like this; At a pre-arranged time he would ask the operator in the states to make a reverse charge call to a local phone box . We would answer and of course accept the charges. This went on for years until the family was deported back to Ireland.

Some time later the pips where added to public phones to alert an operator that they where calling a pay phone and that was the end of it.

Any more examples?

Yep used to do the reverse charges thing with a friend in New York using payphones. Also in the days of the old rotary payphones you could make free calls by tapping out the number sequence on the cradle hooks.
The advent of the colour laser printer and Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop/Painshop Pro whatever made it dead easy to save $200+ dollars a month on my train ticket by simply scanning in an old one, dropping down to the pixel level to re-edit the dates and then print it off on card. Barcode scanners put a stop to that. In fact bar-code scanners put a stop to a lot of skullduggery like switching pricetags from a can of beans to a filet mignon:P.

Also when Banklink machines first came in they weren't that efficient. You could have twenty quid in your bank account, go into the bank, fill out a slip to withdraw. Then go out side and withdraw it again from the wall. They didn't update your balance immediately. Similar thing worked in college. You had to buy a little card to insert into a meter that deducted 10p everytime you wanted to print a page from the laser printer...BUT if you hit the print button, sent the job to the printer and then hit the return-card button on the meter it didn't have time to deduct the money and you printed for free.
Weighing your own fruit and veg at the supermarket then printing the ticket and then throwing a few more carrots or apples into the bag was a fave. Now they're weighed at the checkout.
Did the 5p in German vending machines as well. Used to get cigarettes that had change worth MORE than the 5p in the plastic in the cigarettes so in effect you were being PAID to steal.
I heard there was a way of bypassing your electrical meter using a coat hanger but I'd say you'd want to know what you're doing before trying this and you could deffo wind up in big trouble if you made it look like it was tampered with when the man came to read it.
Kicking the plug on the Space Invaders and Defender machines in Barney's arcade on Talbot Street would give you 99 credits for free games.

Of course tags and scanners have saved millions in shoplifting losses. And changes to the law have stopped just as much scamming/skimming as technology has.

There was also a time when corrupt bus conductors would take 20p, pocket it and give you no ticket instead of you paying the 40p and getting a legit ticket. Of course the beloved conductor is a thing of the past now.