🚀 go-pugleaf

>>> umm, just curious, but... how do they find out if someone has a cable 
>>> descrambler?. Just curious. Not that I have one or anything.

>> They can mess up your Playboy Channel reception and then catch you when
>> you call up to complain.

: HAHAHAHAHAhAHaHAhA
: "hi mr cable company?  My name is bill smith, my social security number is
: 444-32-333, and my address is 123 pine street, and the cable that i am
: stealing from you is not working.  Please send someone out here to fix my 
: cable. 

: I think they have much better ways to find out than this ;-)

They do, but you'd be surprised just how often this sort of gimmick works 
on the stupes. Generally, it's some form of the "magic bullet" that was 
first tried a few years ago. The cable companies analyze the common 
pirate boxes and find their weaknesses. Then they carefully mess up the 
signal on one or more of the popular channels (Playboy, HBO, etc.) so 
that nearly all of the normal boxes can handle it, but the pirate boxes 
choke. In come the complaints; out go the service guys.

The original "magic bullet" was even more subtle: they managed to make a 
text message appear only on the pirate boxes that said something like 
"Call in for your FREE Playboy T-shirt now -- 1-800-YER-FUKD."

If you're running a hacked descramber or cable box, be *very* suspicious 
of reception problems only on premium channels, or audio or text offers 
that sound too good to be true.


-- 
 * James Gifford * jgifford@crl.com * Doing Tomes sans Pomes since 1986! *
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