[twothamendment]

Long ago I got a Psion Series 5. One feature was that it could dial a phone number (output the DTMF) for you. Messing around I've day I realized a contact could have a very long phone number. This was also back in the day when answering machines existed and many had a 2 digit code you could punch in to get into the menu from the outside line.

My contact called Answering Machine had a very long phone number that got me into more than one answering machine. Once in, it was fun to change their outgoing message. One friend was convinced that I must have climbed the back of his apartment building to get in the open 3rd story window to change the message. That would have been cool, but a string of DTMF was much easier!

[hibikir]

Back when international phone calls were a real thing, messing with answering machines that had default settings was a typical fraud vector. People would change the message to say 'I accept' a couple dozen times. Then, they'd lace a collect call with a third party payer, pointed at said answering machine... which accepted the charges. Just not best done from one's home phone, as sufficient charges pointing to the same number would risk attention.

[berkes]

I don't understand. A collect call (in The Netherlands) would just move the costs of the call to the reciever.

Why is it beneficial to call an answering machine and have its owners pay for it?

[vermilingua]

Presumably a collect call that connects to a premium number, a service offered by some providers that allows collecting fees for receiving calls (dial-to-enter competitions and info services)

[kabouseng]

"third party payer"

[berkes]

What is that?

[devb]

Usually A calls B, and B accepts the charges. In this case, A calls B and then C is contacted to accept the charge.

[greggsy]

This is basically what Rupert Murdoch did throughout the late 90’s and into the 00’s, minus the message changes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...

[Fnoord]

I remember there was a KDE application for KDE 1.44 allowing the same. It was called Kphreak, or something like that. This was end 90s.