You are on the official Phone Losers of America web site. Yes, the very same site that has been making telephone operators uneasy for over a decade now. The site that has been featured on CNBC, Tech TV, and countless wacky morning radio shows. The site written about in newspapers like USA Today and The Boston Herald. The site that is probably banned by your school's web filtering software. The site that has endless hours of prank calls, videos, forums, reading material and it's very own podcast.
Anyway, welcome to the site! There's enough material around here to keep you busy for weeks, so it's best if you go ahead and call in sick to work or plan to skip a few days of school. To access our hundreds of pages on the site, just start clicking all over the page like a madman until something interesting pops up. Recent website updates are below...
The internet’s latest social media craze is known as Foursquare. Foursquare is an application designed for most smart phones and can be downloaded at foursquare.com. Whenever you arrive at a bar or restaurant or store, you press a button on your phone and you’re “checked in” to that location. Why would you do this? We don’t know, but apparently billions of people all over the world are really into broadcasting their locations to the public. Just look at all these check-ins below:
By going to search.twitter.com, you can type in 4sq.com and you’ll get a list of everyone on the planet that is currently checking in to someplace. You can even modify your search to include only local businesses. This is great for creepy stalkers who want to keep tabs on random pretty girls. A creepy stalker could jump in his car and speed to the pub for a chance to meet the girl of his dreams. Everywhere she goes.
Another use for Foursquare is for burglars to know when houses are empty. If @sexygirl535 is out having fun with her friends at a bar, then she’s not home, right? So quick, drive over there and break into her house! You know she doesn’t have roommates because she constantly tweets about how it sucks to live alone. A website called Please Rob Me has been set up for just this purpose.
And then there’s the PLA’s favorite pasttime – making prank calls to people. Foursquare is the perfect tool for this. In that search box up there, you click on the Twitter username which probably gives you the name of the person checking in. Then you click on the link in their post and you’ll have the phone number of the business they’re at. Now you can call the business, ask for that person and say something crazy to them. They’re almost always surprised that anyone could know that they’re there. It rarely occurs to them that just minutes ago they transmitted their location to the entire world. Listen to these:
I’m From The Future! Gil gets a call from himself in the future, warning him of dire consequences if he buys Tylenol. Gil doesn’t believe himself.
Red Cross Telemarketing Shaggy gets a telemarketing call from the Red Cross while eating at Royal Thai Cuisine.
Stalker warning for Nicole Nicole is getting a pedicure when she gets a call from a Foursquare representative, warning her not to post her location to the public.
Please Leave Blockbuster tells Sabrina that she’s no longer welcome in their stores. She posted a series of tweets after this calls which went like this: “Just had the dumbest prank played on me thx to foursquare! Guy called Blockbuster, asked for me, told me he was from Corp. & that I wasn’t…..welcome there, and how to leave the store! I was so frickin’ pissed that someone had the nerve to call the store and do that shit!…..I hung up on the tool and told the Blockbuster staff, who were very apologetic. Just a reminder to be careful on foursquare updates! Seriously though! If that had been real, I would have been SO insulted! Just beware of any weird calls if you check-in on foursquare!”
Roy the Internet Stalker Carlie is surprised to get a call from an internet stalker and decides on the phone not to use Foursquare anymore.
Want to hear some more of the phone calls we’ve made to these people? Visit the PLA Forum’s latest discussion board, called Let’s Stalk People! You can listen to calls we’ve made, post your own calls, and find out how these people responded on their Twitter accounts. You’ll see links to hilarious Twitter and Facebook threads like this one:
Foursquare type applications are becoming more popular every day. Yelp.com and loopt.com have a similar service that lets you check in to places you’re visiting. A site called blippy.com lets people transmit what they’re purchasing on their credit cards in real time which could allow someone to know where they’re shopping at. You may notice other similar services showing up in your friends twitter and facebook feeds. When you see a friend check in on Foursquare, it is your duty to prank call them at that place.
The PLA is constantly raising awareness to the security and privacy issues of Foursquare by prank calling as many users as we can. Many users immediately stop using Foursquare after our calls. This is a public service to them since a simple prank call is harmless compared to what could happen to them. Help join the cause by pranking Foursquare users for the greater good! Don’t let the rapists and burglars get to them before we do!
Trevelyn at WeakNet Labs has been busy lately, coding up lots of new programs for the Android platform. Included are blue box and red box programs, now available for free in the Android Market. If you’ve got an Android phone, be sure to use them to make free calls from your cell phone, which will probably cause a universe-exploding paradox of some sort.
For those that don’t know, WeakNet was destroyed by a fire about a month ago, so I’m sure Trevelyn would appreciate a small donation, using the PayPal link on the bottom of his page.
This January, here in Oregon, a new law passed which makes texting or talking on the phone while driving a crime. So now when I switch music tracks on my iPhone or tap the screen to view my GPS location or click on the “next” button for Google Map directions, I run the risk of being pulled over for texting. Apparently they’d prefer that I go back to the old-fashioned method of buying giant paper 4′ x 6′ maps of all the cities I drive in so I can unfold it in front of my face while doing 75 on the Interstate. Yes, an unlit map that covers the entire windshield is much safer. But I digress…
Texting is illegal. And talking on your cell phone without a hands-free contraption is illegal. But you know what isn’t illegal while driving? Eating breakfast. And putting on your makeup. And opening your mail. And changing music tracks on your car stereo. And…reading a book. I’m pretty sure there’s no specific law against reading a book while driving. So I came up with an an ingenious way to fool the police officers trying to enforce this new law. Hide my cell phone in a book! I call it The Phone Book.
I used a Dremel tool to cut a hole in this book, 130 pages deep, so that my cell phone fits snugly inside of it. Now when I pass an officer, nose buried in a book, he’ll just think I’m engrossed in a gripping horror story and not actually breaking any laws by texting my BFF Jill. Here are a few pictures of the construction of this amazing project.
Cell by Stephen King. Not a bad remake of all his other stories.
Looks like it’ll fit nicely inside this book.
A pencil line trace of my iPhone.
The only downside to this project is that it’s slightly harder to control my car when driving 75 MPH around town since I have to use one hand to hold the book and the other to actually type the messages to my friends and then mostly my knee to try and keep the steering wheel straight. I’ve nearly lost control a few times, but I think it’s very unlikely that I’ll be noticed by the police. And if they do pull me over for any other offenses, my cell phone will be hidden safely in my book where he won’t even notice it.
“Were you by any chance texting while swerving all over the place back there?” he’ll ask me.
“Why no officer. Do you see a cell phone in my car?” I’ll reply.
You can click here to find out if texting and/or talking on a cell phone is illegal in your state. If it is, you just may want to invest in a Dremel and make yourself a Phone Book too. As an added bonus, you’ll have a few pages of something to read while you’re impatiently waiting for that text message back from your friend while driving.
UPDATE AND DISCLAIMER: Joseph from Kansas City emailed me this morning and informed me that carving a secret compartment into your Amazon Kindle version of Cell does not work and should not be attempted. Apparently this will completely ruin your Kindle! I’m unsure if other brands of ebooks will have similar consequences, but it’s probably best not to try if you’re not familiar with electronics. It’s also unknown if this hack will work on other paper books besides Stephen King’s Cell. I’ve only tried it on Cell, so if you ruin your copy of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer with this, don’t blame me because I only guarantee that it works on the paperback version of Cell.
Several new shows have been added to the Cacti Radio schedule this week! Carlito from Madhouse Live will be doing a live prank call show on Tuesday nights for the 3 hours preceding The Phone Show. Visit www.madhouselive.com to learn more about Carlito’s show.
And Trevelyn from WeakNet Labs has started up a new show called Taming The Electron, where he plays music and talks about coding every Sunday at 4pm PST. You can view this weeks show at the Taming The Electron page, which is at weaknetlabs.com/tamingtheelectron.
linear is also premiering a new show this week, which will air immediately after The Phone Show on Tuesday, at 10pm PST. Be sure to listen for that. And don’t forget to listen to The Phone Show tomorrow night! Between Carlito, The Phone Show and linear’s new show, it’s going to be an action-packed 5 hours.
SpaceBison made a cool/bizarre PLA video that I’m going to try and pass off as something Christmas-y since it has snowing cacti in it. It’s not as cool as the video in our previous post, but it’s pretty great.
12/24 UPDATE: He made another one that’s much better…
Here’s a new episode of PLA Radio, just in time for Christmas! In this episode we listen to a few more hotel phone calls, a phone mob and announce Cacti Radio. Show notes are below…
If you listen to this episode of PLA Radio, be sure and watch the accompanying video below! It has footage of us pranking the hotel at Defcon, a 5 minute clip of the PLA forum members sitting around a table in a conference room while making the calls to the radio station auction and some clips of me recording this episode of PLA Radio. Plus an awesome surprise at the end!
There’s now a website for our 24-hour streaming station at www.cactiradio.com. You can visit it any time of day and listen to music, prank calls and reruns of PLA Radio and The Phone Show. Both Spessa and murd0c plan to do their own live shows soon. You can also request songs/pranks on the station and the automated system will play them for you. Go listen now! And click here to become a fan of Cacti Radio on Facebook.
And speaking of The Phone Show, it’s on tonight at 9:00pm Pacific. Listen to it on Cacti Radio.
And one last thing…Mr. Anderson has announced a phone mob for Wednesday at 9:00am Central Time. If you can drag yourself out of bed that early, tune into Cacti Radio or watch the PLA Twitter for instructions.
The Phone Show lasted only a single night on Manic Radio last week, then RBCP was “fired” 2 days later. Manic Radio didn’t appreciate our hilarious material at all and you can read a little about all that here. So this time, instead of moving to a new station, despite offers from klulz and Radio Xenu (thanks, guys!), we’re just going to set up our own streaming server which will feature nonstop PLA material 24 hours a day. Take a listen at the links below!
Several people on the PLA Forums have expressed interest in doing their own shows on our station, so keep an eye on it for new shows and material soon. We’ll be setting up a page or a domain for the station once we figure out what the hell to call it. This week The Phone Show will be on at 9pm Pacific, Tuesday night, on the new station. Join us on efnet’s #phonelosers by going to our new chat room page at phonelosers.org/chat/ during the show. Unlike Manic Radio’s chat, you’re much less likely to be kicked out for being clever or funny.
RBCP has just signed a multi-million dollar contract with Manic Radio where The Phone Show will be broadcast from on Tuesday nights at 9pm Pacific. That’s a full hour earlier for you east coast people, so now you don’t have to stay up quite as late.
Join RBCP, linear, Spessa and whoever else decides to call in every Tuesday night to talk about important political issues like pie. It starts this week, so be listening tomorrow! Until then, there’s Manic Radio on Facebook, Manic Radio on Myspace and Manic Radio is even on the internet now! Go listen to some 80’s music on their 90’s looking website.
Below are all of the entries from our pumpkin carving contest, in no particular order. If you still want to submit one today (November 1st), go ahead and I’ll add it to the list. Thanks for the entries, everyone! The winner will be announced on Monday night’s Phone Show so make sure to listen!
Here’s an entry by t0rx:
Here’s some minimal effort by Matt E:
A pay phone by Interrupt Handler:
Interrupt Handler attempting to outdo Altalp’s PLA entry from last year:
Skunkworks RBCP face transfer pumpkin, done using this method:
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Several new shows have been added to the 
Here’s a new episode of PLA Radio, just in time for Christmas! In this episode we listen to a few more hotel phone calls, a phone mob and announce Cacti Radio. Show notes are below…
There’s now a website for our 24-hour streaming station at 
RBCP has just signed a multi-million dollar contract with 
