[karmelapple]

Did anyone use the Red Talking Phonebook in the 1990s?

It had a phone number you could dial and then you could enter codes to get different information such as movie times, jokes, the time of day, and so on.

I liked trying random codes in it to see if I could find hidden services... and eventually I did. I don't recall the exact code, but I think it was like 9987. It turned out to be basically this - an anonymous public voicemail box where you could listen to recordings other people made, and you could make your own.

A few other people stumbled upon it, too, and there was a range of messages on there: some funny, some very silly, some fairly scary or weird.

I've never come across anyone else who had stumbled upon this though... surely someone here has?

[b112]

Closest thing to this, was a number a friend of mine was told about. We called it, and you could hear 100s of people talking, some sort of crossed analog line issue. This was in the 80s in a very rural area.

Anyhow I remember everyone having fun, yelling at everyone else to be heard, but also, a few people really mad. It seemed like some people wanted to make a phone call, everyone else was just having fun.

A few days later it vanished, probably to the happiness of those lines directly affected.