Makes me kinda nostalgic for mag stripe reader/writers.
Credit card fraud was a lot more innocent in those days, of course.
You probably didn't even ban journalists and police from your BBS.
Actually, good law-enforcement-disclaimer story: used to be, when you wrote a text file about making napalm or hacking credit cards or whatever, you would put a little disclaimer at the top: "Note to law enforcement, this file is for informational purposes only", etc. Well, my friend was unimpressed with such useless, unctuous gladhanding, so he used the following disclaimer instead:
Note to Law-enforcement type people:
This file is intended to promote
general havoc and *ANARCHY*, and
since your going to be the first
assholes up against the wall.. there
isnt a damn thing you can do about
it, pigs!
I'm trying to think of good carding stories from the old days. There was the guy who used to card limo rides to visit his girlfriend two states over. Got busted for pulling a realistic looking watergun on some kids at the mall. Turned up, years later, working in youth outreach for Romney.
We had illegal fireworks, but we didn't even have a modem.
My first encounter with fraud was when a neighbor kid convinced 7-year-old me that a sweetgum seed pod was alive, and I kept it as a secret pet for several days, feeding it pine needles per the neighbor's instructions. I wish I were making this up.
8: Oh, Stanley! That's so cute and hilarious!
We made fake Student Of The Week coupons to Burger King, entitling us to a free Whopper. (I didn't. Kids near me did.)
We (my housemates and I) made fake IDs for ourselves. Well, we made laminated photo ID cards for our house, and then we lied about our ages on them, just in case some drinking or tobacco-purveying establishment would for some reason take an ID from "Messiah Village". I also lied about my title. (I was unemployed, but I put "ninja".)
8: Only for several days? And then you just let it starve to death?
Did you want to go snipe hunting?
I didn't hear about snipe hunting until I moved to the south and met a boy scout. By then I'd learned not to trust southerners and boy scouts.
At one of my jobs, my coworkers wanted to sneak into this trade show (Infoworld? Don't remember.) by posing as journalists. I made fake cards that said we were associate producers for "MTV Tech Know", MTV's new show about technology. Foolishly, I put a real office number on the cards. Turns out 1. trade shows distribute a press list to all the exhibitors and 2. when internet companies think you're a representative of a hot, youth-oriented media brand that had not before this time taken any particular interest in internet companies, they really want to talk to you.
I talked a friend out of paying money to a guy who was selling very implausible fake IDs. The seller had a big board painted to look like a license and you'd stand in front and get your picture taken.
"MTV Tech Know"
That's a pretty good name for a show.
16: people still do big business selling those, I think.
very implausible fake IDs
"Saskatchewan?! That can't possibly be a real state!"
Yeah. It was between that or Muhammed.
A boyfriend made me ~10 fake IDs, which gradually got confiscated. The thing was, they were very accurate copies of my Florida license, which was a genuine piece of shit.
One time the bouncer pulled the two sheets of laminate apart, and said "See? Fake!" and I was particularly outraged because you could easily have done that with my real ID. And then my real ID would have been destroyed!
Looking at this Guardian story, which comes with a neat chart in the print edition (hey grauniad, all that data journalism stuff you keep babbling about?), I keep thinking that the rise of credit-card fraud has been a net positive for society.
Car theft and household burglary both soared in the UK in the 1980s and hit a peak in 1989-1992, then declined steeply and haven't really stopped. Crimes of violence did something similar. One argument which is certainly true is that cars got harder to steal, and another is "who bothers stealing a car radio these days?" which people used to do all the time. But that doesn't explain burglary. In many ways, "crime" is a bit of a 80s thing to worry about - there was a huge boom in alarm systems and whatnot and now, well, you try finding an alarm fitter when your landlady's vintage 1990 alarm system suddenly wakes up.
I think the crime of choice for your typical ned just shifted - they realised they could just apply for credit under a stiff name and clear far more cash without dealing with fences, getting killed in police car chases, getting into brawls or robberies, or skulking about in the rain in somebody's back garden. So less general unpleasantness, less violence, and better yet, it's the banks that have to wear the loss.
I would have guessed that the people with the skills for credit fraud weren't doing so much burglary, but I could be wrong. I didn't even know criminals were named 'ned'.
it's the banks that have to wear the loss
IME, it's not the banks but rather the merchants that wear the loss. But I take your general point as an interesting one.
24: hoo, boy. the banks bulk-mailed out pre-filled credit card applications! I remember when Morgan Stanley Dean Witter entered the UK market - I would have been 16 or 17 - getting junk mail offering me a £2,000 credit limit when I was actually too young to enter into a credit agreement legally. How much skill do you need to sign someone else's name on the form?
COME ON! THEY MADE A MOVIE ABOUT ME!
26: Oh, that. I thought you were talking about the stuff like in the article linked in the post.
LIKE SIX DIFFERENT MOVIES! GOD, I"M THIRSTY.
Anyway, British banks seemed absurdly trusting compared to U.S. banks when I was there in the early 90s. People would write checks for more than they had money in the bank and the bank would send them a nice letter and not charge a fee if they made a deposit.
re: 24
Ned is a Scotticism.*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_%28Scottish%29
* although I imagine it's used elsewhere [as per Alex].
Which is the sort of thing a competent car thief might well re-tool into.
Also, if you live in a flat in the UK, you generally receive significant to enormous amounts of junk mail for past tenants. I'm sure I don't need to draw you a diagram.
I'm sure that drawing a diagram would be a lot of work in ASCII.
Also, "ned culture" is the single best phrase I've heard today and my greatest wish that doesn't involve pantlessness is to hear old people on the local TV news complaining about it.
I talked a friend out of paying money to a guy who was selling very implausible fake IDs. The seller had a big board painted to look like a license and you'd stand in front and get your picture taken.
Those things worked very well in the 1980's. My brother had one.
My one violent encounter with a bouncer came when some big Australian dude working a bar door in DC decided that my passport must be fake since I had a by then rare non laminated one, but rather with the number perforated along the top. (They issued them for much longer abroad than in the US.) After, a, uh, discussion, I ended up picked up and literally thrown out of the bar. I had taken exception to his attempt to tear it. He took exception to the way I took exception. I was going to call the cops so they could give me the five bucks I deserved, but my friends dragged me away.
cute teenage girls get into bars even when they're obviously underage, and then people buy them drinks! that's why I spent so much time at martin's tavern in georgetown (washington d.c.) after school when I was 14. the drinking age was 18 then, but still. I didn't look 18.
I never really felt the need for a fake ID, but, then, I was friends with lots of older kids who, in their need to have a drummer for their band, reluctantly hung out with awkward 15-year-old me.
