With a few pieces of electronics Ringway will have simple crystal radios up and running in his cell using the metal toilet bowl as a magnetic loop antenna.
Dialing a number for this would be the opposite of clandestine, and easily expose an entire network in a heartbeat. The whole point of number stations is that they are broadcast, and that it seriously doesn't matter if a million people hear it.
As is proven by all the people that listen for them to this day, even with no hope of ever knowing the what and why of it all! you cant even go by the language or the accent, as those are equally likely to be a feint. it would be a poor secret agent indeed who was not fluent in at least a few languages, particularly those of both allied and rival nations alike. and for corporate espionage and drug cartels who can likewise leverage this sort of information transfer, the language tells you little if anything about the sender....
Correct because the only ppl supposed to know the codes to crack the numbers are the ones sending and receiving...but I'm sure ppl figure it out sometimes
From 1979 to 2000 I lived right at the back of RAF Marham in Norfolk. One day a telephone engineer turned up ten minuets after I reported that the phone was not working from the nearest phone box, this was in 1983, The telephone engineer asked me where the telephone exchange was, something I thought was a bit odd so I asked him, he told me he was from London and that he was in the area to fix the RAF's phones so was called out for my phone as well. I did not think to much about this other than thinking it was great getting the phone fixed so quickly. Thing was after the phone got "Fixed" I started to get crossed lines mostly from Northern Ireland along with weird delays and echoes and on one scansion I got crossed with a phone line where numbers were being read out. This crossed line thing went on into the 80's when I told a phone engineer that I thought my phone was tapped and I reckoned that the MOD could not work out why I would want to live so close to the RAF base, the reason was it was cheap with a large barn I could use as an engineering workshop where the neighbours would not complain about the noise.
@@thepotatoincident3593 Something very strange was going on, the sudden fault with the engineer arriving before I had got back from the village phone box half a mile away. Always a Northern irish line I got crossed with when I live in Norfolk which is about as far fro Northern Ireland you can get in the UK and the fact that the BT engineer was from London and from the department that they refered to as the top floor by his own admission.
I would imagine that they'd use different lines for long distance and maybe they got some sort crosstalk by installing wires incorrectly? I don't know but it sounds strange how you would get numbers read out and echos.
Phantom circuit, where 2 telephone circuits or lines are used to carry a 3rd making eavesdropping very difficult. Or it's as simple as a little moisture in the cable, bad insulation on a splice or IDC block not punched down enough. Back in the 80s lots of exchanges were still elecromechanical and had their own set of faults.
I used to live near an SAS base (in Auckland, NZ). One night there was a loud bang, which was worrying. So I phoned them and asked "Was that you?" and the person on the other end of the phone responded "Wasn't me, and I'm the only one here.". True! :)
One thing to note, dialling the phone number would enable a local carrier within the target country to identify a spy. As secure methods of communications go, this is about the worst one can use.
@@zzzztj Yes, it has been used successfuly by Russia in the current conflict. They have loitering drones that are a GSM cell. These trick GSM devices into connecting to them. Once this is achieved all of the billing and routing data is provided. Then they poll the device to ask for a list of known cells and signal strengths. This is then used to geolocate the device. Many of the mercenaries engaged in the conflict keep their phone on to upload to TikTok etc. This has cost them many lives. I worked on a version of that 20 years back for a German mobile carrier. It was used for location based services. If you are tracing a voip call, then it is simple IP routing analysis that will reveal your location.
You wouldn't call in on your cell phone 😂😂💀 use a landline at a gas station, use a WiFi VoIP phone on a public WiFi network, among hundreds of other ways to access the phone system.
As a military radio operator I used various forms of encryption. To be kept simple they were a series of cards that had a grid with a letter, word or number in each position. You were issued a key that would be written onto (using a china graph pencil) two plastic bars that gave you the Eastings/Northings. Then you would encode/decode messages using that. So it would go EY GL AP etc. and that would correspond to the grid reference for the character or word. Each card also had a number and they would be changed regularly and you would know which card to use based upon an agreed rotation. The ones used in training were never the ones used for real operations. New cards (never before seen) would be issued prior to deployment and then not used again after. Cards could be lost or compromised by capture and so they had a use by date or an order not to use the card set would be given. Perhaps these number stations were issuing the latest key to be used. Doesn't sound so secure but it was how battlefield encryption was dealt with back then. There could also have been an agreed offset that you would apply so if they said A they meant Z, who knows.
@@PaxTemplar That was introduced in the 80's. The version I used was called SLIDEX if I recall correctly. We also had a even more simplified version that was used in N. Ireland which I think was called CODEX which may have been the forerunner of BATCO but I have never used BATCO so I am unsure. It is so long ago that I may not be entirely accurate ;)
@@PaxTemplar I see that it was introduced along the Clansman range of equipment. I used the old (very heavy) Larkspur range. You had to be fit to run miles carrying a A41 with a spare battery :)
Many years ago I used to do "war dialling". This is where you scan a whole range of 0800 numbers looking for "interesting" things. I'm fairly sure some of the things I found were used for covert communications of one form or another. Since most interactive phone systems work by responding to DTMF tones (and I would always try DTMF tones with any interesting things I found). I suspect all a secret service would have to do is change the actual frequencies of DTMF they use, and their system could easily be hidden behind something apparently innocuous like the customer support line for a tech product. I won't go into any further detail for reasons that may or may not be obvious, but yeah, there definitely used to be some interesting things around on the phone network.
I remember getting through to a 0800 number with a pattern on it. A very polite woman answered but point blank refused to say who I had connected to. Seemed odd. I forget the number.
There are often a lot of secret back doors in company 800 numbers, but they're usually all innocuous. I used to work for a company where you could call into any conference room by just calling the regular customer service line and then entering a specific code on the keypad. The same thing was also popular for multi-person calls in the late 2000s, and a lot of companies had a dedicated conference number that you could call, enter a specific code, and then be placed into a room in which multiple people could call in and join the room. These types of systems are usually for business travelers so that they don't miss important board meetings, and putting it behind an 800 number allows them to call in for free.
@@xXRedTheDragonXx Yep these were common - standard practice when wardialling is always to try DTMF tones at the beginning of the call during any hold music etc. Often you can skip a company's automated system by repeatedly hitting #, or 0 - this was standard on some old Meridian systems - enough incorrect inputs detected would forward you directly to a real person. Conf systems were used very regularly by us back in the day. The holy grail being a conf system with 0800 dialin for the UK as well as 1800 dialin for the US. Very useful when you have a lot of friends in the US who you would like to talk to for hours. I imagine a true covert operations would not use standard DTMF tones to activate their hidden system. There were a couple of numbers I found back in the day that had bursts of what sounded like white noise right at the beginning of the call when someone answered. (Being a phreaker, we'd always be looking out for tones on pickup, as these were often characteristic of the older exchanges which were hackable with a "blue box"). These ones with white noise on pickup though.. I was convinced that white noise was some form of encrypted databurst - I even digitized it and looked for various tell-tale signs, like checksum bits and suchlike. Couldn't find anything - but then a well encrypted message would be indistinguishable from white noise, to someone not knowing the key (or decoding algorithm)
I installed some of these lines back in the mid 80s for a government agency, you are quite correct, the non director area code of Aldershot or any other area code does not end up where you think they will.
Interesting video. Kind of reminds me of the 1-800-GOLF-TIPS mystery. Before it was solved, a few people had thought that it might have been a modern iteration of a numbers station. That’s what actually got me interested in numbers stations to begin with and how I discovered this channel.
In the USA, elevators are required to have a emergency phone that can make / receive calls. Poking around on the keys will net a message " Elevator call " then the elevator number followed by a couple of choices to listen in / talk to occupants. In this particular instance, it was a car dealer and judging by the background noise / time of day, it was an elevator in the service department
They exist in the UK as well. I remember being in one lift where someone rang the emergency phone. They said they were running a survey of emergency phones. Very bizarre!
It totally sounded like a recording from the radio to me. A novelty. If the spooks had to access it via a telephone network it would surely "blow their cover", and limits their options to receive it off-grid.
Dang you..... Ever since your first video featuring Lincolnshire Poacher, that little song has been randomly appearing in my head almost weekly. Found myself walking down the hall in the basement of my office building today whistling the song.
Personally, I think the phone line was a hoax. As you said, having a phone number would mean foreign intelligence could easily look through phone records searching for potential spies in their country. While a radio signal would be a lot harder to police and monitor, as there could be no logging of who had listened to it. As well I used to cycle past these transmitters on a public footpath. Between Buckingham and Gawcott, as had some friends from school that lived in Gawcott. They started to be taken down in about 1995.
The whole point of a shortwave numbers station is to send encoded information anonymously. No-one listening in can tell who is trying to receive it. Calling a phone number doesn’t achieve that.
Your reference to voice inflections always reminds me that the guy who used to read the English football scores for the BBC World Service also used an inflection if the away team s cored more goals than the home team.
I don’t know if it was the same guy but I always noticed the inflections too on my dad’s car radio. “Worcester nil Norwich (raised) three, Manchester City one Bolton Wanderers (lowered) nil.”
Phone numbers would work nearly as well, the big flaw being that any one tracing calls of as suspected agent would show repeated dialings. whereas a shortwave radio remains a readily available means of transferring information in an unbreakable format
I would have thought if they have a phone number for spies to get messages from, it would appear to be a perfectly normal phone number until the caller performed some predetermined action, like dialling a specific code. Even that’s not great though. The action could be recorded or logged and replayed later.
well telephone cards for public teleffons where anonymus .. these prepaid cards for public telefons where available everyone.... i also knew a undercover agent in germany that the " rote armee fraktion " traavelled 100 of km by night.. made then a 3 sec call at the public railway station and the moved on with another train .... thema telefon still many things to exploore ... excellent video
9:04 It's not about "why", it's about "why not"? As in, why not pay tribute to the station by putting its jingle on the phone call. If anything, it still serves its intended purpose. It means you called the right number.
Likely a great hoax, but if not (and if I was the person in charge of setting it up) then I'd definitely have used a recording of the tune - and one that was recorded at the end a fading HF radio path to make it sound like the original would have sounded, out 'in the field' - just to put a brief smile on the faces of the field officers who needed to access it! 🙂
Would be interesting to see what number that text message was actually sent from. Employees of phone companies can theoretically see the log of any customer. Often also the numbers that are hidden for the user are listed there. I think it would be the same for numbers that are fake, as the phone companies would need to have the correct caller number to calculate the due payments.
Payment control happens true line id and not by phone numbers. I installed more then a few phone systems myself, the number you see when someone calls you, can be changed to anything, including text as needed. Or nothing at all. Even with text messages. And that possibility was there already as far back as in the late 80's when digital phone lines became available. In Europe it became widely used early 90's. However business wise late 90's with bulk number blocks.
SS7 is grossly insecure to even total amateurs. To say that governments, particularly well-equipped western governments, have absolute carte blanche over it is a gross understatement. There will be no data, there will be no log. It is broken, if it were any other system it would have been abandoned decades ago - but governments like that sort of access and telcos don't have the balls to challenge them, so it is going nowhere.
Makes me wonder about strange things I've heard when "accidentally" dialing wrong numbers as a kid. I've heard things that didn't sound like a fax or a modem. None quite like that though. Maybe that one was someone having a bit of fun.
I've gotten robo telemarketer/scam calls and often I just mute my phone and listen to waste their time. Sometimes in the background you can hear weird machinery/computer noises. I've often wondered what that was.
@@RCAvhstape VOIP calls have some weird background noises that are caused by low digitization rates. They sound really unrecognizable if you increase the volume.
Most likely a practical joke from someone working at that VoIP company. Those VoIP exchanges have elaborate programming environments to setup such numbers, and combined with a recording of the intro music and the chime this can be made in a couple of minutes. As you correctly noted, it does not sound at all like the real Lincolnshire Poacher.
This was much better than any Agatha Christie novel!! Thanks for sharing this story; we'll probably never know the truth, but it's fun to think about while lying in the bath or waiting for paint to dry!
As an American, I've always found the UK ring tone to be exotic and interesting. Do you have a similar feeling the other way, or is ours boring and simple?
There is something about the US ringtone I've always liked, the British one is boring to a Brit. It was more fun years ago when you could work out what type of exchange you were calling into by the pitch and intervals of the ringtone
The specific tone heard on the line, no, the US’s is a more boring beep. However the one long tone rather than two short tones sounds nicer on mechanical bells imo. But on electrical/electronic phone buzzers I prefer our double beep. What’s kind of funny is nowadays a lot of in-office VOIP systems default to the American tone on the line, so UK peeps are getting more and more accustomed to hearing it - though to us it means “I’m being transferred… again 😠”!
I've been using the sound of dial up internet as my voicemail greeting for years - because I don't want people to leave a message, it works. Nobody has ever left a message. I might change it to this, just for fun.
Best video yet. FWIW, I own an original copy of The Conet Project which I purchased from new when it was released. I also happen to know a chap who is an explosives expert, has a patent on a bomb defusing application (which was used by the military in Syria and Iraq), and is obsessed with codes and puzzles. But most interestingly he once went under the pseudonym as 'The Colonel' (not 'Kernel'). Same pronunciation, different spelling. He would do something like this as a bit of fun.
Ah Jesus Lewis mate, perfect Friday night fare this... Sitting in me shed out back, cuppa tea in my manky paw, got the Baofeng and the Yaesu airband on scan, and managing to pull in all sorts... Not sat my Ham yet, so not transmitting, but the bits I pick up, and the aircraft chatter on a lovely night like this reminds me why I do this... See what you've started lad? Eh? 🤣🤣 Thanks again for all your work Lewis, got me hooked mate 👍🏴✊
Someone hacked my computer and uploaded the Lincolnshire poacher radio broadcast (called number stations or something) to it in a webcam folder I used to use - I have no idea how they did it but it was a really enjoyable listen!!!
Of course, MI6 would *want* us to think it was a hoax... :) But my money is on it being an actual hoax that got too much attention for the level of effort that was put into it.
You are correct--this is a wag using an answer service. The voice inflection is for English native speakers--it's very hard for east europeans to mimic the friendly last consonant
Unlike a radio broadcast recorded ph numbers can be rung back. The music before hand could be so an agent can make sure they have pen and paper. Also to tune one's ears into the broadcast.
In high school, we lived in a house wired with aluminum. It was fairly common in the '70s. You had to use outlets and switches meant for aluminum wire, buff the stripped wire ro a shine, and use an antioxidant compound. Hardware Store Guy gave 14 year old me detailed instructions on dealing with aluminum wire when I went to get a couple new switches... If you used outlets meant for copper with aluminum wire, and plugged something in with a high current draw, fire is a real possibility....
From time to time your videos pop up and they are always something I learn from! Again this is something I wasn't aware of and was interesting to watch. Nice one :) loved the vid
Somewhere, in a base or control room. Is a phone plugged in to the wall that keeps ringing. With people asking ‘what’s that phone ringing for again?’ ‘No idea, it’s always been doing that’
I find it highly unlikely that a phone would be used to provide secure communications. The PSTN number is instantly traceable from every international gateway exchange. A little more complicated using VOIP but still possible. It's all about leaving a trail.
The British Security Forces used a system called Goliath in the 70's that used conventional phone lines. The code was "Go Green" and a switch would be flicked that then scrambled the voice signal. If you listened to it without the decoding device, it sounded like the signal had been sliced up and rearranged. The key was changed daily.
The PSTN number shouldn't matter. A spy's phone would be registered to a fake name, at a real address and paid for with a real slush fund. Essentially anyone making this call to this number from West Germany wouldn't appear to be any different than any tourist in West Germany calling any other number in the UK. Obviously the number would be known to the counterintelligence, but when they get hold of the phone records it won't give them any information they can work with. John Smith, the address of a shed in Kent, and a Government bank account. Nothing that helps them find who made the call in their country. The actual issue would be not that they could listen in, because the code would be almost impossible to crack in an actionable amount of time, but rather that the USSR would frequently just disconnect their phone networks with jammers, meaning that if the spy wanted to hear a new message they wouldn't necessarily always be able to get through to hear it, and there are better ways that they can communicate, especially now in the digital era.
When I was a kid in Northern Israel I used to listen to short wave radio, trying to catch some music and sometimes I would get this and other number stations. I had no idea what they were and they scared the life out of me.
@@themossad .....I thought you retired after the cold war ended, what's your base of operations? Military or something with surveillance and counterintelligence?
I don't think it was a hoax, I think it was some tech geek's personal answering machine - because when we had answering-machines, we all went through that phase, like my Dad doing his in Latin.
I would be curious to know if the number strings keep changing or stay the same on the phone recording. It would also be interesting to see if the number strings were copied off a known recording of the Lincolnshire Poacher. Cheers Lewis
Anyone recognize that doorbell-like tone they added to the recording? I'm guessing the hoaxer had to pull it from something else. Maybe for more authenticity as a numbers station, they should have used the Windows XP shut down sound at the end, like the Cubans.
Loved your vid! Have a few comments on your problems with it though. I'll write this from the POV that it wasn't a hoax. To your point on DTMF authentication, why would it ever be included? The phone LP is one-way comms, as was the broadcast LP. No auth is required. Plus adding DTMF auth is more difficult to run and more jeapordy for the field agent. The vocal inflection being different could be a simple side effect of the new equipment used to provide the service. Is it more likely they just used much modern equipment to provision the phone based service? If they've reprovisioned tech to run the phone line, they may just have acquired a recording of LP tune rather than keep the old generating equipment. A bit shoddy, sure, but budgetary cuts make sense. Grabbing the CD version (that they eould know about) isn't too much of a stretch. The message not being repeated in the same was as the broadcast LP... well obviously. It's a phone. If you miss the message you just dial again. Phone LP not being 45 minutes long... Why can the LP's message/function not evolve? One could argue that this evidence that its not a hoax, as a hoaxer would just grab existing LP recordings and not go to the relatively considerable bother of generating new, original, number sets. Calling a humble UK landline wouldn't raise too much suspicion on modern phone networks. Plus there are public call boxes to be used, burner phones etc. It's not as massive a security fail as everyone seems to be assuming. Now as for if it is actually a hoax or not... I'm not convinced. Easier to believe if the hoaxer just turned it off when it got annoying. But to go to the bother of the romeo xray 39 message... Jury's still out for me.
Nowadays, if a phone line is used at all, the number of who's calling could be used as some sort of authentication. Fred Bloggs' call just goes through to a generic voicemail or message that the number is not in use, but James Bond's call initiates playback of the encrypted message. This, of course means that only certain phones can call the number, so spies are stuffed if that phone is lost, destroyed, or captured, but it means you aren't sending an authentication code down the line that could be eavesdroped upon - even if you use a time based one time code (think 2FA authenticator apps) dialing DTMF codes is easier to pick up automatically as unusual, but voice traffic is what a phone is used for. Even an automatic voice isn't easy to detect automatically as robocalls are a thing, so anyone wanting to find a spy phoning home would need to listen to all phone calls and actually parse what is being said to have any hope of finding something. Pair that all with encryption methods that encrypt your English language message as more English language words (or any other language for that matter) and you need to have a system capable of answering "does this text make grammatical sense" to find a spy.
Oh, and it goes without saying that this is all in my crypto-nerd fantasy. Calling a number outside the country a spy is in would raise alarm bells, calling a number inside the county probably wouldn't, but its still tracked for billing. And if you want to try it at home, don't make your encryption stronger than your kneecaps, because they'll pick one to break.
Okay, a couple of things here. There are plenty of things to suggest this is a hoax, but a few things that you point to make little sense. A phone message wouldn't need to be repeated. If you failed to get the message, you would just call back. A system like this might have the same message active for a certain amount of time, and a call back would not be a real issue. Also as systems change over time, it's quite possible that a backup or alternate system uses a different automated voicing system that does not have the same quality of inflection. Neither of these things are specific gotcha items. Also, if you take away the need to be in a large scale HF farm to run the thing, being at any military base at all would be equally likely. It would also be possible that a wide range of numbers in a wide range of locations also pointed to a single computerized phone answering system located almost anywhere in the world. VoIP is particularly useful for being able to have a phone number in another country that would appear to be local to people in that area. A system like this could be a very interesting version of hiding in plain sight. Particularly good if you have phone numbers in various remote parts of the world that would seem normal for local people to contact. Oh, and yes, an automated system could deliver a message keyed to the phone number used. So while it is easy to dismiss this whole thing as a hoax, there is a solid sniff of plausibility in all of it too.
I remember calling this number in 2013, I received the "Not available Romeo X-ray 39 message." I'm surprised the number is still active after all those years. Was it a hoax?.....Probably.
When I leave work at 1AM (I work a strange shift I know lol). I'm able to pick up a Spanish station on AM in my car, I can't remember the frequency but still, it's interesting that I'm able to receive it from Spain
I deciphered the codes with my one time pad and here's what I got: "Hello we have been trying to reach you about your cars extended warranty. Please give us a ring back with the codeword: Warranty. Thank you."
Doesn't need to be read out twice even with a bad line, if you can just call back and listen again, and the mobile number might've just been spoofed hence the non working message when rang back.
But if the numbers are read out once, you might not know you misheard, forcing you to ring it twice anyway thereby increasing the likelihood of being caught.
I agree with your conclusion but why wouldn't the owner of this number just disconnect it/take it out of service? Presumably there is some cost to keeping the account active.
Really not that expensive to keep a VOIP service live, and some can be kept live for zero cost as only charge for outbound calls. To have a geographic dialling code usually charge a few pounds as a monthly fee, but unless outbound calls or forwarding is used then no further cost.
@@izzienewport I get that but even if only a small amount a month who would spend the money/why? At this point the gag is done and it seems like just a waste of money
When you call a secret number in the military they answer the phone with the last four digits, example, "3422" I had a TS-SCI clearance, the only juicy secrets are Nuke stuff
Aldershot used to be a main HQ for BT. Their closeness to govt. communications can't be understated; remember Tommy Flowers and Colossus? A hoaxer might choose Aldershot just to throw a googly in the mix!
It is, however, not implausible that the original system ran for so long that the original recordings/synthesis were of a format not easily recoverable. Or simply not available anymore as perhaps the system long outlived its original intended purpouse. The lack of authentication could be explained in the same way as in the shortwave broadcast. Plausible deniability. But we will never know, because if we knew, this wouldn't be as exciting.
I seriously doubt that was official. As others have said, it would have been way too insecure. Running a job? Dialing into the UK from abroad? Tapped? You'd have been quickly caught out. I agree that the number was likely routed to a PC somewhere, but I imagine it was a troll with access to VOIP at the time, picking a number that would ping back to a location unsuspicious to most investigating it (which is possible, VOIP doesn't always back trace to the IP, it only back traces to the in/outbound phone number's physical location) Not impossible to have a SMS service auto respond either. A costly, but effective troll.
I dont get this, it makes no sense? I don't think this is real? if arrested in a foreign country first thing they would pull is phone logs and ring the number and you are busted...
Hi Lewis, do you have a recording from the poacher with a full string, those 45 minutes? I want to try to get a recording cleaned up from noise. I have some plugins in my DAW that could do the trick?
Next video: "How I used shortwave radio to make TH-cam videos from prison after being arrested for espionage"
A shortwave radio crudely made from prison canteen forks and instant noodle flavour sachets, commonly referred to by inmates as a "gonk".
AH AH AH AH AH
The AM bandit ;)
Pinned as the best comment 😂👍🏻
With a few pieces of electronics Ringway will have simple crystal radios up and running in his cell using the metal toilet bowl as a magnetic loop antenna.
Dialing a number for this would be the opposite of clandestine, and easily expose an entire network in a heartbeat. The whole point of number stations is that they are broadcast, and that it seriously doesn't matter if a million people hear it.
As is proven by all the people that listen for them to this day, even with no hope of ever knowing the what and why of it all! you cant even go by the language or the accent, as those are equally likely to be a feint. it would be a poor secret agent indeed who was not fluent in at least a few languages, particularly those of both allied and rival nations alike. and for corporate espionage and drug cartels who can likewise leverage this sort of information transfer, the language tells you little if anything about the sender....
Correct because the only ppl supposed to know the codes to crack the numbers are the ones sending and receiving...but I'm sure ppl figure it out sometimes
From 1979 to 2000 I lived right at the back of RAF Marham in Norfolk. One day a telephone engineer turned up ten minuets after I reported that the phone was not working from the nearest phone box, this was in 1983, The telephone engineer asked me where the telephone exchange was, something I thought was a bit odd so I asked him, he told me he was from London and that he was in the area to fix the RAF's phones so was called out for my phone as well. I did not think to much about this other than thinking it was great getting the phone fixed so quickly. Thing was after the phone got "Fixed" I started to get crossed lines mostly from Northern Ireland along with weird delays and echoes and on one scansion I got crossed with a phone line where numbers were being read out. This crossed line thing went on into the 80's when I told a phone engineer that I thought my phone was tapped and I reckoned that the MOD could not work out why I would want to live so close to the RAF base, the reason was it was cheap with a large barn I could use as an engineering workshop where the neighbours would not complain about the noise.
i'm not sure it was a tapped phone, you shouldn't be getting feedback like that or else people getting tapped would know.
@@thepotatoincident3593 Something very strange was going on, the sudden fault with the engineer arriving before I had got back from the village phone box half a mile away. Always a Northern irish line I got crossed with when I live in Norfolk which is about as far fro Northern Ireland you can get in the UK and the fact that the BT engineer was from London and from the department that they refered to as the top floor by his own admission.
I would imagine that they'd use different lines for long distance and maybe they got some sort crosstalk by installing wires incorrectly?
I don't know but it sounds strange how you would get numbers read out and echos.
@@Equiluxe1 great story, thanks for sharing
Phantom circuit, where 2 telephone circuits or lines are used to carry a 3rd making eavesdropping very difficult.
Or it's as simple as a little moisture in the cable, bad insulation on a splice or IDC block not punched down enough.
Back in the 80s lots of exchanges were still elecromechanical and had their own set of faults.
I used to live near an SAS base (in Auckland, NZ). One night there was a loud bang, which was worrying. So I phoned them and asked "Was that you?" and the person on the other end of the phone responded "Wasn't me, and I'm the only one here.". True! :)
Yes. So true
@@H.EL-Othemanythe sas base isn't secret, and it does indeed have an office number listed online
Yea you just phoned the air force base? Lol
@@ptrekboxbreaks5198 you literally can just ring up the local base, they'll give the info you need
Usually a guardroom or a duty clerk will answer. Needs to be listed for emergencies 👍🏻
That string of numbers matches the combination for the lock on my luggage!
One thing to note, dialling the phone number would enable a local carrier within the target country to identify a spy. As secure methods of communications go, this is about the worst one can use.
exactly... Everything on the Telecoms network is registered, it's called the billing system.
@@zzzztj Yes, it has been used successfuly by Russia in the current conflict. They have loitering drones that are a GSM cell. These trick GSM devices into connecting to them. Once this is achieved all of the billing and routing data is provided. Then they poll the device to ask for a list of known cells and signal strengths. This is then used to geolocate the device. Many of the mercenaries engaged in the conflict keep their phone on to upload to TikTok etc. This has cost them many lives.
I worked on a version of that 20 years back for a German mobile carrier. It was used for location based services.
If you are tracing a voip call, then it is simple IP routing analysis that will reveal your location.
Unless you're using a payphone, a stolen cell phone, a landline at a bar, etc. etc...
You wouldn't call in on your cell phone 😂😂💀 use a landline at a gas station, use a WiFi VoIP phone on a public WiFi network, among hundreds of other ways to access the phone system.
@@alec4672 You still need an account with a carrier to use a VOIP phone. You need access to a Trunk to call a number on the PSTN.
As a military radio operator I used various forms of encryption. To be kept simple they were a series of cards that had a grid with a letter, word or number in each position. You were issued a key that would be written onto (using a china graph pencil) two plastic bars that gave you the Eastings/Northings. Then you would encode/decode messages using that. So it would go EY GL AP etc. and that would correspond to the grid reference for the character or word. Each card also had a number and they would be changed regularly and you would know which card to use based upon an agreed rotation. The ones used in training were never the ones used for real operations. New cards (never before seen) would be issued prior to deployment and then not used again after. Cards could be lost or compromised by capture and so they had a use by date or an order not to use the card set would be given.
Perhaps these number stations were issuing the latest key to be used. Doesn't sound so secure but it was how battlefield encryption was dealt with back then. There could also have been an agreed offset that you would apply so if they said A they meant Z, who knows.
Damn that's super fascinating. I love how complicated military grade encryption is, respect to the people who invented the method
Sounds like a variation of the one-time pad technique. Very cool!
@Bryn Gerard.. BATCO?
@@PaxTemplar That was introduced in the 80's. The version I used was called SLIDEX if I recall correctly. We also had a even more simplified version that was used in N. Ireland which I think was called CODEX which may have been the forerunner of BATCO but I have never used BATCO so I am unsure.
It is so long ago that I may not be entirely accurate ;)
@@PaxTemplar I see that it was introduced along the Clansman range of equipment. I used the old (very heavy) Larkspur range. You had to be fit to run miles carrying a A41 with a spare battery :)
Many years ago I used to do "war dialling". This is where you scan a whole range of 0800 numbers looking for "interesting" things.
I'm fairly sure some of the things I found were used for covert communications of one form or another.
Since most interactive phone systems work by responding to DTMF tones (and I would always try DTMF tones with any interesting things I found).
I suspect all a secret service would have to do is change the actual frequencies of DTMF they use, and their system could easily be hidden behind something apparently innocuous like the customer support line for a tech product.
I won't go into any further detail for reasons that may or may not be obvious, but yeah, there definitely used to be some interesting things around on the phone network.
Phone Phreaks of the world unite!!
Now isn't that something!
I remember getting through to a 0800 number with a pattern on it. A very polite woman answered but point blank refused to say who I had connected to. Seemed odd. I forget the number.
There are often a lot of secret back doors in company 800 numbers, but they're usually all innocuous. I used to work for a company where you could call into any conference room by just calling the regular customer service line and then entering a specific code on the keypad. The same thing was also popular for multi-person calls in the late 2000s, and a lot of companies had a dedicated conference number that you could call, enter a specific code, and then be placed into a room in which multiple people could call in and join the room. These types of systems are usually for business travelers so that they don't miss important board meetings, and putting it behind an 800 number allows them to call in for free.
@@xXRedTheDragonXx Yep these were common - standard practice when wardialling is always to try DTMF tones at the beginning of the call during any hold music etc.
Often you can skip a company's automated system by repeatedly hitting #, or 0 - this was standard on some old Meridian systems - enough incorrect inputs detected would forward you directly to a real person.
Conf systems were used very regularly by us back in the day. The holy grail being a conf system with 0800 dialin for the UK as well as 1800 dialin for the US. Very useful when you have a lot of friends in the US who you would like to talk to for hours.
I imagine a true covert operations would not use standard DTMF tones to activate their hidden system.
There were a couple of numbers I found back in the day that had bursts of what sounded like white noise right at the beginning of the call when someone answered.
(Being a phreaker, we'd always be looking out for tones on pickup, as these were often characteristic of the older exchanges which were hackable with a "blue box").
These ones with white noise on pickup though.. I was convinced that white noise was some form of encrypted databurst - I even digitized it and looked for various tell-tale signs, like checksum bits and suchlike. Couldn't find anything - but then a well encrypted message would be indistinguishable from white noise, to someone not knowing the key (or decoding algorithm)
I installed some of these lines back in the mid 80s for a government agency, you are quite correct, the non director area code of Aldershot or any other area code does not end up where you think they will.
Interesting video. Kind of reminds me of the 1-800-GOLF-TIPS mystery. Before it was solved, a few people had thought that it might have been a modern iteration of a numbers station. That’s what actually got me interested in numbers stations to begin with and how I discovered this channel.
In the USA, elevators are required to have a emergency phone that can make / receive calls. Poking around on the keys will net a message " Elevator call " then the elevator number followed by a couple of choices to listen in / talk to occupants. In this particular instance, it was a car dealer and judging by the background noise / time of day, it was an elevator in the service department
:O
@@crazytowerz3113 what
@@1993MAZDAMIATA he has a similar pfp and username as me XD
@@crazytowerz3113 I know
They exist in the UK as well. I remember being in one lift where someone rang the emergency phone. They said they were running a survey of emergency phones. Very bizarre!
I'm smiling at the thought of a hoaxer effectively writing off a phone number, I hope it wasn't important to them. 🤣 A great video as always!
It totally sounded like a recording from the radio to me. A novelty. If the spooks had to access it via a telephone network it would surely "blow their cover", and limits their options to receive it off-grid.
its the local bingo club.
or a game of battleships before the age of the internet
Yes the original broadcast always had an accented number on the last digit of the 5 figure group.
Maybe they have a sense of humor
Dang you..... Ever since your first video featuring Lincolnshire Poacher, that little song has been randomly appearing in my head almost weekly. Found myself walking down the hall in the basement of my office building today whistling the song.
‘A finger of fudge is just enough to give the kids a treat’
Walk past the wrong chap whistling that, and forever you’ll hear two sets of footsteps 😂
Personally, I think the phone line was a hoax. As you said, having a phone number would mean foreign intelligence could easily look through phone records searching for potential spies in their country. While a radio signal would be a lot harder to police and monitor, as there could be no logging of who had listened to it.
As well I used to cycle past these transmitters on a public footpath. Between Buckingham and Gawcott, as had some friends from school that lived in Gawcott. They started to be taken down in about 1995.
The whole point of a shortwave numbers station is to send encoded information anonymously. No-one listening in can tell who is trying to receive it. Calling a phone number doesn’t achieve that.
"Hello?"
"This is the United States calling. Are we reaching..."
*Phone clicks*
"See, he keeps hanging up, and it's a man answering."
Wanna take a baaath?
That's immediately what I thought of when I heard the double rings!
Is their anyone out there ?
brooooo are you my twin or something
WE HAVE THE SAME PFP AND SIMILAR USERNAME XD
Your reference to voice inflections always reminds me that the guy who used to read the English football scores for the BBC World Service also used an inflection if the away team s cored more goals than the home team.
I don’t know if it was the same guy but I always noticed the inflections too on my dad’s car radio. “Worcester nil Norwich (raised) three, Manchester City one Bolton Wanderers (lowered) nil.”
Phone numbers would work nearly as well, the big flaw being that any one tracing calls of as suspected agent would show repeated dialings. whereas a shortwave radio remains a readily available means of transferring information in an unbreakable format
That may be true, but they could have easily used a single use SIM card in a mobile phone and then threw away the SIM after one use.
I would have thought if they have a phone number for spies to get messages from, it would appear to be a perfectly normal phone number until the caller performed some predetermined action, like dialling a specific code. Even that’s not great though. The action could be recorded or logged and replayed later.
well telephone cards for public teleffons where anonymus .. these prepaid cards for public telefons where available everyone.... i also knew a undercover agent in germany that the " rote armee fraktion " traavelled 100 of km by night.. made then a 3 sec call at the public railway station and the moved on with another train .... thema telefon still many things to exploore ... excellent video
I grew up in Lincolnshire. Some people don't go poaching (but not many).
I was in the local shop the other day and there was Lincolnshire Poacher cheese on sale. I found myself humming the tune when I walked out!
Is it wrapped in expired one-time pads?
9:04 It's not about "why", it's about "why not"? As in, why not pay tribute to the station by putting its jingle on the phone call. If anything, it still serves its intended purpose. It means you called the right number.
Likely a great hoax, but if not (and if I was the person in charge of setting it up) then I'd definitely have used a recording of the tune - and one that was recorded at the end a fading HF radio path to make it sound like the original would have sounded, out 'in the field' - just to put a brief smile on the faces of the field officers who needed to access it! 🙂
Would be interesting to see what number that text message was actually sent from. Employees of phone companies can theoretically see the log of any customer. Often also the numbers that are hidden for the user are listed there. I think it would be the same for numbers that are fake, as the phone companies would need to have the correct caller number to calculate the due payments.
Payment control happens true line id and not by phone numbers. I installed more then a few phone systems myself, the number you see when someone calls you, can be changed to anything, including text as needed. Or nothing at all. Even with text messages. And that possibility was there already as far back as in the late 80's when digital phone lines became available. In Europe it became widely used early 90's. However business wise late 90's with bulk number blocks.
SS7 is grossly insecure to even total amateurs. To say that governments, particularly well-equipped western governments, have absolute carte blanche over it is a gross understatement. There will be no data, there will be no log. It is broken, if it were any other system it would have been abandoned decades ago - but governments like that sort of access and telcos don't have the balls to challenge them, so it is going nowhere.
It's likely a prank. The Aldershot number is probably VOIP deliebrately chosen to look authentic because of Aldershot's military links.
Makes me wonder about strange things I've heard when "accidentally" dialing wrong numbers as a kid. I've heard things that didn't sound like a fax or a modem. None quite like that though. Maybe that one was someone having a bit of fun.
Probably was an rtty service or some kind of switchboard diagnostic number..
I've gotten robo telemarketer/scam calls and often I just mute my phone and listen to waste their time. Sometimes in the background you can hear weird machinery/computer noises. I've often wondered what that was.
@@RCAvhstape VOIP calls have some weird background noises that are caused by low digitization rates. They sound really unrecognizable if you increase the volume.
@@brucekives2194 So it's like the digital version of crosstalk?
Most likely a practical joke from someone working at that VoIP company. Those VoIP exchanges have elaborate programming environments to setup such numbers, and combined with a recording of the intro music and the chime this can be made in a couple of minutes.
As you correctly noted, it does not sound at all like the real Lincolnshire Poacher.
This was much better than any Agatha Christie novel!!
Thanks for sharing this story; we'll probably never know the truth, but it's fun to think about while lying in the bath or waiting for paint to dry!
As an American, I've always found the UK ring tone to be exotic and interesting. Do you have a similar feeling the other way, or is ours boring and simple?
no
There is something about the US ringtone I've always liked, the British one is boring to a Brit. It was more fun years ago when you could work out what type of exchange you were calling into by the pitch and intervals of the ringtone
No
The specific tone heard on the line, no, the US’s is a more boring beep.
However the one long tone rather than two short tones sounds nicer on mechanical bells imo. But on electrical/electronic phone buzzers I prefer our double beep.
What’s kind of funny is nowadays a lot of in-office VOIP systems default to the American tone on the line, so UK peeps are getting more and more accustomed to hearing it - though to us it means “I’m being transferred… again 😠”!
Fayyy
*plays liconlin tune on phone*
my brain: *Spinning heavy*
Real
Really enjoyed this one Lewis - compelling narrative and again, very professionally done! 73
Thanks Clint
I've been using the sound of dial up internet as my voicemail greeting for years - because I don't want people to leave a message, it works. Nobody has ever left a message. I might change it to this, just for fun.
hahhahahahaaa
You can just turn off the voicemail
@@PascalSignificathat's no fun though.
Thank's for this video Lewis! Very good as usual! 🙂
Are we sure this isn't the guys from Boards of Canada having a laugh as part of an album release?
We can only dream my friend
i chuckled.
Boards of Canada? Releasing an album? If only.
yeah in our dreams buddy
How about a follow-up "I Rang a Doctors Surgery And Got An Appointment" - Just as fanciful :)
Great video, Lewis! Thanks!
It can’t be done! 😂
I failed at the 'first level boss' yesterday. 😡
Ive been waiting for doctors results for weeks after having a scan
Pretty certain this will have been setup as part of an interactive puzzle, such as a Geocache.
Yeah. Or like a real world escape room puzzle kind of thing.
Best video yet. FWIW, I own an original copy of The Conet Project which I purchased from new when it was released. I also happen to know a chap who is an explosives expert, has a patent on a bomb defusing application (which was used by the military in Syria and Iraq), and is obsessed with codes and puzzles. But most interestingly he once went under the pseudonym as 'The Colonel' (not 'Kernel'). Same pronunciation, different spelling. He would do something like this as a bit of fun.
Ah Jesus Lewis mate, perfect Friday night fare this... Sitting in me shed out back, cuppa tea in my manky paw, got the Baofeng and the Yaesu airband on scan, and managing to pull in all sorts... Not sat my Ham yet, so not transmitting, but the bits I pick up, and the aircraft chatter on a lovely night like this reminds me why I do this... See what you've started lad? Eh? 🤣🤣 Thanks again for all your work Lewis, got me hooked mate 👍🏴✊
Enjoy
@@Ben_3113 Thank you 😉👍
Someone hacked my computer and uploaded the Lincolnshire poacher radio broadcast (called number stations or something) to it in a webcam folder I used to use - I have no idea how they did it but it was a really enjoyable listen!!!
I didn't do it. I swear! Exciting video. Thanks for sharing.
Of course, MI6 would *want* us to think it was a hoax... :) But my money is on it being an actual hoax that got too much attention for the level of effort that was put into it.
You are correct--this is a wag using an answer service. The voice inflection is for English native speakers--it's very hard for east europeans to mimic the friendly last consonant
Very interesting Lewis. Your videos get better and better 👏👏
Unlike a radio broadcast recorded ph numbers can be rung back. The music before hand could be so an agent can make sure they have pen and paper. Also to tune one's ears into the broadcast.
In high school, we lived in a house wired with aluminum. It was fairly common in the '70s. You had to use outlets and switches meant for aluminum wire, buff the stripped wire ro a shine, and use an antioxidant compound. Hardware Store Guy gave 14 year old me detailed instructions on dealing with aluminum wire when I went to get a couple new switches...
If you used outlets meant for copper with aluminum wire, and plugged something in with a high current draw, fire is a real possibility....
It was a hoax. I can't remember where I read it but people explained how it was linked to a guy who was into number stations. 😂
Thats the first thing I noticed, the phone call had radio static on the music.
From time to time your videos pop up and they are always something I learn from! Again this is something I wasn't aware of and was interesting to watch. Nice one :) loved the vid
That tune reminds me of the TV advert for Cadbury's Fudge..
"A finger of Fudge is just enough to give the kids a treat" Remember it?
A finger of fudge is just enough to hide a message in.....
Buddy....the line was busy because i was on the phone listening to the message. HAHA 😆
Somewhere, in a base or control room.
Is a phone plugged in to the wall that keeps ringing.
With people asking ‘what’s that phone ringing for again?’
‘No idea, it’s always been doing that’
I find it highly unlikely that a phone would be used to provide secure communications. The PSTN number is instantly traceable from every international gateway exchange. A little more complicated using VOIP but still possible. It's all about leaving a trail.
The British Security Forces used a system called Goliath in the 70's that used conventional phone lines. The code was "Go Green" and a switch would be flicked that then scrambled the voice signal. If you listened to it without the decoding device, it sounded like the signal had been sliced up and rearranged.
The key was changed daily.
@@bryngerard4334 There are even commercial versions of that. Philips did the Sercaphone however there is still no way of hiding the call records.
The PSTN number shouldn't matter. A spy's phone would be registered to a fake name, at a real address and paid for with a real slush fund.
Essentially anyone making this call to this number from West Germany wouldn't appear to be any different than any tourist in West Germany calling any other number in the UK.
Obviously the number would be known to the counterintelligence, but when they get hold of the phone records it won't give them any information they can work with. John Smith, the address of a shed in Kent, and a Government bank account. Nothing that helps them find who made the call in their country.
The actual issue would be not that they could listen in, because the code would be almost impossible to crack in an actionable amount of time, but rather that the USSR would frequently just disconnect their phone networks with jammers, meaning that if the spy wanted to hear a new message they wouldn't necessarily always be able to get through to hear it, and there are better ways that they can communicate, especially now in the digital era.
@@bryngerard4334like analogue satellite TV scramblers? That’s neat.
Some agents must have run up a huge phone bill calling that number.
I remember hearing about the Lincolnshire Poacher number, wasn't it run by Simon Mason?
Just called it, no ringtone, call ended.
I'm American and when just hear that chime it gives me the chills
Excellent story, thanks. But can I also say, your video production is really top notch. "BBC quality" as they say....
When I was a kid in Northern Israel I used to listen to short wave radio, trying to catch some music and sometimes I would get this and other number stations. I had no idea what they were and they scared the life out of me.
I'm guessing you still out in the field Mossad?
@@HaveanOreshnik It never stops
@@themossad .....I thought you retired after the cold war ended, what's your base of operations? Military or something with surveillance and counterintelligence?
@@HaveanOreshnik Lots of work in Iran these days.
@@themossad ....I'll try to be friendly and not call the Iranian Intelligence
It sound like the music was ripped from the DOS port of the original Oregon Trail game.
I don't think it was a hoax, I think it was some tech geek's personal answering machine - because when we had answering-machines, we all went through that phase, like my Dad doing his in Latin.
So a hoax? 😂
@@RingwayManchester 😆
Fascinating. You’ve done a great job of sorting through a can of worms here. Well done. ✌🏻👍🏻🇬🇧
I would be curious to know if the number strings keep changing or stay the same on the phone recording. It would also be interesting to see if the number strings were copied off a known recording of the Lincolnshire Poacher. Cheers Lewis
Heh! Lewis made it clear that the strings were not in the same format as the broadcast ones.
5:29 Changes like this happen when a SECRET numbers stations gets discovered, which is why they gave the message for a backup contact location.
Anyone recognize that doorbell-like tone they added to the recording? I'm guessing the hoaxer had to pull it from something else. Maybe for more authenticity as a numbers station, they should have used the Windows XP shut down sound at the end, like the Cubans.
Loved your vid! Have a few comments on your problems with it though. I'll write this from the POV that it wasn't a hoax.
To your point on DTMF authentication, why would it ever be included? The phone LP is one-way comms, as was the broadcast LP. No auth is required. Plus adding DTMF auth is more difficult to run and more jeapordy for the field agent.
The vocal inflection being different could be a simple side effect of the new equipment used to provide the service. Is it more likely they just used much modern equipment to provision the phone based service?
If they've reprovisioned tech to run the phone line, they may just have acquired a recording of LP tune rather than keep the old generating equipment. A bit shoddy, sure, but budgetary cuts make sense. Grabbing the CD version (that they eould know about) isn't too much of a stretch.
The message not being repeated in the same was as the broadcast LP... well obviously. It's a phone. If you miss the message you just dial again.
Phone LP not being 45 minutes long... Why can the LP's message/function not evolve? One could argue that this evidence that its not a hoax, as a hoaxer would just grab existing LP recordings and not go to the relatively considerable bother of generating new, original, number sets.
Calling a humble UK landline wouldn't raise too much suspicion on modern phone networks. Plus there are public call boxes to be used, burner phones etc. It's not as massive a security fail as everyone seems to be assuming.
Now as for if it is actually a hoax or not... I'm not convinced. Easier to believe if the hoaxer just turned it off when it got annoying. But to go to the bother of the romeo xray 39 message... Jury's still out for me.
Some interesting points! Cheers
That first phone call reminded me of that one CSGO ARG easter egg - very unsettling!
I remember as a boy in the 90s dialling a number and getting these numbers so it’s been going a lot longer on the telephony system.
I tuned into what I thought was some secret listening post, turned out it was a test broadcast for classic FM.
Have you considered war dialing to try to find other numbers? I would think it would be pretty easy to write a program to find the numbers
Nowadays, if a phone line is used at all, the number of who's calling could be used as some sort of authentication. Fred Bloggs' call just goes through to a generic voicemail or message that the number is not in use, but James Bond's call initiates playback of the encrypted message. This, of course means that only certain phones can call the number, so spies are stuffed if that phone is lost, destroyed, or captured, but it means you aren't sending an authentication code down the line that could be eavesdroped upon - even if you use a time based one time code (think 2FA authenticator apps) dialing DTMF codes is easier to pick up automatically as unusual, but voice traffic is what a phone is used for. Even an automatic voice isn't easy to detect automatically as robocalls are a thing, so anyone wanting to find a spy phoning home would need to listen to all phone calls and actually parse what is being said to have any hope of finding something. Pair that all with encryption methods that encrypt your English language message as more English language words (or any other language for that matter) and you need to have a system capable of answering "does this text make grammatical sense" to find a spy.
Profanity-PGP is the encryption method I'm talking about, just replace the wordlist of swears with some more mundane words from your chosen language
Oh, and it goes without saying that this is all in my crypto-nerd fantasy. Calling a number outside the country a spy is in would raise alarm bells, calling a number inside the county probably wouldn't, but its still tracked for billing.
And if you want to try it at home, don't make your encryption stronger than your kneecaps, because they'll pick one to break.
this would be a nice ringtone for SW-fans
I love your exposure of these snoopers
Okay, a couple of things here. There are plenty of things to suggest this is a hoax, but a few things that you point to make little sense.
A phone message wouldn't need to be repeated. If you failed to get the message, you would just call back. A system like this might have the same message active for a certain amount of time, and a call back would not be a real issue. Also as systems change over time, it's quite possible that a backup or alternate system uses a different automated voicing system that does not have the same quality of inflection. Neither of these things are specific gotcha items.
Also, if you take away the need to be in a large scale HF farm to run the thing, being at any military base at all would be equally likely. It would also be possible that a wide range of numbers in a wide range of locations also pointed to a single computerized phone answering system located almost anywhere in the world. VoIP is particularly useful for being able to have a phone number in another country that would appear to be local to people in that area. A system like this could be a very interesting version of hiding in plain sight. Particularly good if you have phone numbers in various remote parts of the world that would seem normal for local people to contact.
Oh, and yes, an automated system could deliver a message keyed to the phone number used.
So while it is easy to dismiss this whole thing as a hoax, there is a solid sniff of plausibility in all of it too.
I remember calling this number in 2013, I received the "Not available Romeo X-ray 39 message." I'm surprised the number is still active after all those years. Was it a hoax?.....Probably.
love your videos
When I leave work at 1AM (I work a strange shift I know lol). I'm able to pick up a Spanish station on AM in my car, I can't remember the frequency but still, it's interesting that I'm able to receive it from Spain
Queen Elizabeth’s channel
“Random guy rings secret numbers station”
I deciphered the codes with my one time pad and here's what I got: "Hello we have been trying to reach you about your cars extended warranty. Please give us a ring back with the codeword: Warranty. Thank you."
If it is a hoax i wonder if they left a funny coded message using something obvious as the key to decipher it?
Notice in this video that there is still snow on the ground up on the hills around Manchester in May. 🙂
Or I filmed the footage 5 months ago 😂👍🏻
@@RingwayManchester It would have been blizzard conditions up there in January. 🙂
What would I know? I was only there at the time
I bet the Poacher makes the calls! reversing the charges ofcourse! right before the drone strikes the receiver of Poachers call :-D
Doesn't need to be read out twice even with a bad line, if you can just call back and listen again, and the mobile number might've just been spoofed hence the non working message when rang back.
But if the numbers are read out once, you might not know you misheard, forcing you to ring it twice anyway thereby increasing the likelihood of being caught.
I agree with your conclusion but why wouldn't the owner of this number just disconnect it/take it out of service? Presumably there is some cost to keeping the account active.
Really not that expensive to keep a VOIP service live, and some can be kept live for zero cost as only charge for outbound calls. To have a geographic dialling code usually charge a few pounds as a monthly fee, but unless outbound calls or forwarding is used then no further cost.
@@izzienewport I get that but even if only a small amount a month who would spend the money/why? At this point the gag is done and it seems like just a waste of money
Having an access code with DTMF would fail plausible deniability of dialing a wrong number by accident and enjoying the pretty music.
Aldershot is a GARRISON town not just home to "a barracks". It has multiple Lines , each of which contain multiple barracks
Ur correct about them not confirming?
"Never believe anything in politics, until it has been officially denied."
Otto Von Bismarck.
Superb work once again. Thank you.
When you call a secret number in the military they answer the phone with the last four digits, example, "3422" I had a TS-SCI clearance, the only juicy secrets are Nuke stuff
You got Rick Rolled by a numbers station.
This sounds like so many other "number station" phone hoaxes. The biggest one I can remember was OTP22 from recent memory.
Aldershot used to be a main HQ for BT. Their closeness to govt. communications can't be understated; remember Tommy Flowers and Colossus? A hoaxer might choose Aldershot just to throw a googly in the mix!
It is, however, not implausible that the original system ran for so long that the original recordings/synthesis were of a format not easily recoverable. Or simply not available anymore as perhaps the system long outlived its original intended purpouse.
The lack of authentication could be explained in the same way as in the shortwave broadcast. Plausible deniability.
But we will never know, because if we knew, this wouldn't be as exciting.
I now eat the LP cheese here in Lincolnshire.
Still convinced my washing machine plays this song at the end of a cycle
I seriously doubt that was official. As others have said, it would have been way too insecure. Running a job? Dialing into the UK from abroad? Tapped? You'd have been quickly caught out.
I agree that the number was likely routed to a PC somewhere, but I imagine it was a troll with access to VOIP at the time, picking a number that would ping back to a location unsuspicious to most investigating it (which is possible, VOIP doesn't always back trace to the IP, it only back traces to the in/outbound phone number's physical location)
Not impossible to have a SMS service auto respond either. A costly, but effective troll.
Yeah. By 2013, Twilio had existed for 5 years, Nexmo 2, so it would have been easy to set it up
I dont get this, it makes no sense?
I don't think this is real?
if arrested in a foreign country first thing they would pull is phone logs and ring the number and you are busted...
I wonder what the spurious numbers actually might translate to(?).
Hi Lewis, do you have a recording from the poacher with a full string, those 45 minutes? I want to try to get a recording cleaned up from noise. I have some plugins in my DAW that could do the trick?
Brilliant content, cheers Lewis and very professionally done.