[The Real Slim Shady]

What do you think? On a decent sized forum like this there appears to be absolutely no phreaking discussions.

I suspect it has become a very niche specialty but i do believe the skills are still very relevant. Its simply that the "internet" is easier.

Any one still into the phreaking world here? How has this niche evolved in the last 15 years for you? Are you more focused on say, VOIP technologies or are you still old school war dialing?

[xevenofhearts]

I feel like it kind of it is dying off. We're moving into a different way of connecting people, by that I mean not over the telephone lines. The culture and mindset is still there, in fact stronger than ever, but phreaking (in the context of my post you're reading, phone phreaking) doesn't seem to be too prominent. Sadly. But now we've got hackers that hack things on the internet.

I will say this though:
The hacker culture to me seems to be slowly becoming less... of what it used to be? Being degraded might be a better way to put it. We're using the term too broadly. People often include the 8 year old who downloaded a hack for CoD as a hacker. We even include teenage girls who steal each others phones and post pictures on behalf of each other as "hacking". Many people don't know what the term really means. I've even heard it as an excuse for people losing their passwords.

[The Real Slim Shady]

Im actually not so sure that the term hacker is actually being degraded all that much more. Its already done lol. The term script kiddie has been around since the end of the 90's at least and people and even then there were debates about the definition of hacker being misused. The only difference is the number of people interested in the subject nowadays. I cant be certain of these numbers but in 2000 it appears there were about 350 million internet users world wide. in 2010 there was 2 billion. So even if percentages were similar there are a shitload more people interested in the subject.

That said another question i would ask... would you define someone who's into cellphone cloning, voip, etc, and other new telephony protocols as a phreaker or a hacker? I think people default to the term hacker, but in reality what is it that would define phreaker? is it the medium (ie copper wires) or the interest (ie telephony) that defines a phreaker?

[The Real Slim Shady]

Im actually not so sure that the term hacker is actually being degraded all that much more. Its already done lol. The term script kiddie has been around since the end of the 90's at least and people and even then there were debates about the definition of hacker being misused. The only difference is the number of people interested in the subject nowadays. I cant be certain of these numbers but in 2000 it appears there were about 350 million internet users world wide. in 2010 there was 2 billion. So even if percentages were similar there are a shitload more people interested in the subject.

That said another question i would ask... would you define someone who's into cellphone cloning, voip, etc, and other new telephony protocols as a phreaker or a hacker? I think people default to the term hacker, but in reality what is it that would define phreaker? is it the medium (ie copper wires) or the interest (ie telephony) that defines a phreaker?