Talk:Beige box (phreaking)

Not just any phone

When Beige Boxes were first written about in BBS text files and underground newsletters, it was generally accepted that any telephone could be converted to a beige box (or plugged into a RJ-11 to alligator adapter). But even then this was not true, as car-based mobile phones and phones intended for a PBX had completely different interfaces to the network. The latter has surprised many a thrift-shop bargain hunter who had bought an old phone for a couple of bucks not realizing until they got home that it wouldn't plug into the wall.

But today it is even less true that any phone can be (trivially) be made into a beige box. Cell phones can't. VoIP phones can't. Only phones intended for POTS use can be - and they are now in decline, proportionally, as newer technologies gain market share.

The evolution of telephone technology is going to continue to present a problem for current articles on phreaking as the technologies exploited by phreaking devices fades into obsolescence.

In this article, I have put a qualifier on the paragraph about building an adapter that turns any phone into a beige box: it turns any POTS phone that will plug into the adapter's RJ-11 jack into a beige box. Not "any phone."