_________ SWAT MAGAZINE ISSUE SIXTEEN: APRIL 1999 __________ / \___________________________________________/ \ / Scamming forfree.co.uk \ / By -=The Firestarter=- \ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- With a sudden boom in personal numbers lately, lots of people have got there hands on premium rate numbers to help them make a little cash. One such company is forfree.co.uk they offer a pretty good deal, where you call up a premium rate number and you remain on the line of ages (at a £1 a minute), then at the end of it you leave your name and address and they send you some goods (depending on what you wanted). They offer a load of stuff, everything from CD players to Air guns down to Whiskey and Cigarettes and laser pointers. Sounds pretty cool eh? Well if you read the small print at the bottom, it say's something to the effect of "calls cost a maximum of £45", ok so i'm confused, the premimium rate number gives that guy 50p for every minute that you remain on the line. so at most from a single call he can make is £22. Where the fuck can you get a CD player for £22? better still where can you get 200 cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey for £45, hell that's less than the tax on them that our scummy government put on. But still for the normal phreak it wouldn't really be much of a problem if it was a scam, I mean it's still free, right? So all that's really needed to get the goods for free (as in 100% free) all one would need is an outdial. So we had an address set up ready for some stuff to be sent to, hmm what shall we choose? has to be something that's not really cheap. But I don't want to spend hours on the phone, so let's go for a laser pointer. Doesn't cost too much, and even if it was something really cheap and nasty it would be a Mk 3 laser (yes those are the cheap imports that everyone was going on about because people where getting blinded with them, before anyone asks, yes i do own one). All set, all that's needed now is some good music on in the background to listen to in the event of getting something that sounds like the tune an Ice cream van plays while we're waiting on the phone. So after calling up the PBX I was going to abuse and then forwarding the call to the number for the laser pointer, i was all set. It picked up and i got a recored message going on about how the laser pointer that they sold was legal and shit like that. Not that I cared. Anyway I was on the phone for about twenty minutes, my CD's playing in the background. I left the details on the machine at the end and then hung up the phone. So did the items arrive? well it said something along the lines of it takeing upto 28 days for delivery. As it happened it was scammed on the 23rd, only 2 days before this issue hits it's deadline, so whether it actually arrived or not is another matter. So if you've got a PBX to abuse and some time to kill, feel free to give them a call and get some stuff for free. I don't believe that they keep a record of where all the calls come from, so it would be difficult for them trace who'd ripped them off, so if you phreaked a PBX in the middle of a big city and had the goods sent to your house, when the police confront them about somebody adding £50 to a companies phone bill to call them it would be very hard for them to give them the details of exactly who had the goods sent to where, obviously they would keep records of the addesses where stuff was sent, but I can't see the police going around everybodies house who had bought stuff.