h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

These people are known as phreakers. A main part of it is getting free phone calles, starting in the USA years ago a man found out that he could get free phone calls using a 2600hz tone with a free toy whistle from a cereal box. Phreakers also have the ability to "hijack" peoples telephone lines from outside their homes using a device known as a blue box. This avctivity is called beige boxing and involves opening up a modular jack and attatching to correct wire to screws outside peoples homes in that box on the side :]
I think this is the technique used in the cases of BT charging people for calls to sex lines - a show on watchdog was made about this but phreakers were never mentioned. Although i'm sure BT must be aware of it....

Not all of the US phreaking techniques work in the UK.
Blue Boxing is one of the ones that doesn't. Although it depends on who you speak to.
I've been putting some information about this in the latest issue of APT (About Phreakin Time), get it from http://www.net22.freeserve.co.uk/apt/

The whistle came from Captain Crunch cereal.

We have had a similar discussion originating from a featurestory in the danish television:
A representative from the danish telecompagnies stating the impossibllity to use "blue boxing" (and other techniques like that) without a trace. And on the other side a newsreporter demonstrating the simplicity of the technique (yes they did it on tv like a lesson for all; do this, do that, then this,.....). Behold; the tele-technician was then told what to look for, but didn't find anything.

So - either they are using nearsighted pre-neanderthal's as technicians, or one could get the impression that economy somehow has an influence on the efforts the telecom's are putting into anti-phreaking.
But of course, I can't postulate a reasoning chain like: it's impossible to do phreaking - we don't care if you weren't home that day - pay the bill - if its impossible why bother to do any investigation?.

Right, and that's where the Phreaker got his name, Captain Crunch. There was also a blind phreaker, who could whilstle a perfect 2600hz. I believe his name was Whistlin' Joe (I think something else came after it, but I'm not really sure). People would call him to tune their blue boxes. When ISS (or was it ESS) came along, blue boxing was effectively squashed. It's my hope that people can adapt to the new environments and figure out new techniques.

LMAO at you lot!