Америкалық телефон хакері – Joybubbles туралы деректер

American phone phreak

Joybubbles (1949 05 25 – 2007 08 08), born Josef Carl Engressia Jr. in Richmond, Virginia, was an early phone phreak. Born blind, he became interested in telephones at age four. He had absolute pitch, and was able to whistle 2600 hertz into a telephone, an operator tone also used by blue box phreaking devices. Joybubbles said that he had an IQ of "172 or something". Joybubbles died at his Minneapolis home on Died: 2007 08 08 (aged 58). According to his death certificate, he died of natural causes with congestive heart failure as a contributing condition.

As a five year old, Joybubbles discovered he could dial phone numbers by clicking the hang up switch rapidly ("tapping"), and at the age of 7 he accidentally discovered that whistling at certain frequencies could activate phone switches. A student at the University of South Florida in the late 1960s, he was given the nickname "Whistler" due to his ability to place free long distance phone calls by whistling the proper tones with his mouth. After a Canadian operator reported him for selling such calls for $1 at the university, he was suspended and fined $25 but soon reinstated. He later graduated with a degree in philosophy and moved to Tennessee.

In 1982, he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lived on his Social Security disability pension and a job as a test subject for scent intensity research. He was an ordained minister of his own Church of Eternal Childhood, and ran a one man nonprofit support organization for people rediscovering and re experiencing childhood, called "We Won't Grow Up". He tried to remain an active member of the children's community around his home, giving readings at the local library and setting up phone calls to terminally ill children around the world. He often contributed to the Bulletin Board section of the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper. Sexually abused as a child by one of his teachers, Joybubbles "reverted to his childhood" in May 1988 and remained there until his death, claiming that he was five years old. He legally changed his name to Joybubbles in 1991, stating that he wanted to put his past, specifically the abuse, behind him. An active amateur radio operator with the call sign WB0RPA, he held an amateur extra class license, the highest grade issued. As shown in the Federal Communications Commission database, he also earned both a General radiotelephone operator license and a commercial radiotelegraph operator's license, as well as a ship radar endorsement on these certificates. He was one of the few to qualify for the now obsolete aircraft radiotelegraph endorsement on the latter license.