About Laws Against Phone Cracking
Phone cracking, or phone phreaking, is a practice that's been around since the computer craze of the 1980s. Phone phreaking, at its base, is the attempt to gain access to a telecommunications network for fun or malicious activity. There are laws against phone cracking, and many of the activities that stem from phone cracking, and the laws vary by jurisdiction.
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Theft
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One of the crimes phone cracking can lead to is theft. For instance, if you are illegally accessing a telecommunications network and using it to make phone calls without paying, you're committing a crime. Since there is a fee for accessing telecommunications resources and you are byassing that fee by cracking the network and using it for your own ends, you are stealing time and energy that are commodities for which the network expects to be paid. According to Tech-faq, this was one of the earliest types of phone phreaking.
Invasion of Privacy
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Another type of phone cracking is when you try to gain access to a telecommunications network's information, or to a specific phone's information. Since the phreaker is trying to gain access to private information, such as an unlisted phone number or where computer access is, that can be considered an invasion of privacy. If the cracker then attempts to use the information he got through the initial phone crack to perform some additional act, this aggravates and elevates the original charge.
Cyber Crime
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Most phone cracking is done with the aid of computers. The law has evolved to create an entire legal code for the illegal use of computers and computer technology called cyber crimes. These crimes help the legal system adapt to the use of technology in criminal offenses and phone phreakers might get a nasty surprise when they find out that, while they were at home the whole time, the signal from their modems slipped across state lines, making the cyber crime a federal offense.
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