Fifth Estate Collective
1980 Telephone Credit Card Codes
Although Bell Telephone’s security around its long distance telephone codes rival that of the state’s nuclear secrets, its usually only a matter of days after they are devised each January before they are in the hands of phone phreaks.
The publication of these secret codes is an annual event in this newspaper as our continued retribution against the profit-swollen Bell monopoly for prosecuting the Fifth Estate several years ago on trumped up charges relating to the publication of mechanical phone devices.
Here’s the code for this year as follows (and please note several changes in procedure from past years): A telephone credit card number is eleven digits. The first three is the area code, the next seven are the phone number being charged to; the next three are a billing code ( a list is available from the Yippies!, Box 392, Canal Street Station, NY, NY 10012) and the final digit is for verification, which must match the SIXTH digit of the charged-to number. The code is 1–4, 2–8, 3–1, 4–5, 5–9, 6–2, 7–6, 8–0, 9–3, 0–7. Example: phone number 202-456-1414 becomes: 202-456-1414-0324. Happy dialing!