[justfalcon]

Taken from my recent YC app:

When I was a freshman in high school, I spent a lot of time building custom PCs for friend's parents to make some extra cash on the side. An issue I ran into early was I never budgeted for the cost of Windows XP Pro so I was left either telling them their order would cost an additional $200+ or use a hacked/stolen/whatever key. I decided that neither was the most opportune option. "The Art of Deception" by Kevin Mitnick was one of my favorite books at the time, and using some of the knowledge gained from that, I found a loophole in Microsofts phone-tree that allowed me access to a high-tier representative. I then came up with a few clever and elaborate scenarios and ended up receiving over $5000 worth of Windows XP Pro keys without ever paying a cent...or buying an initial copy for that matter.