A bit of history

Long ago there were such things called diverters. The phone company used them so employees could dial a number and get a second dial tone; this way when dialing long distance the charges would be billed back to the company and not the employee.

I recall my friend using them to dial in to a BBS in the early 90’s. The BBS was in FT Worth, which was long distance for us on the other side of Dallas. He had a program that would dial a block of phone numbers all night long and give a report of which numbers gave a second dial tone. Could you imagine a phone call at 3:00 AM waking you? This was before Caller ID so no one could call him back or ever know who called.

If I recall correctly, I believe Hollywood had a few “Hacker” movies where the actor used diverters to mask their number.

Read More »