Every once in a while, I’ll see this conversation:

<CMack> whoa whoa WHOA
<CMack> there was a project to find Jenny by dialing 867-5309 at every area code in the US
<CMack> [http://www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/phreak/jenny07.txt][1]
<CMack> That's not the wild bit
<CMack> The crazy part is just a bit down
<CMack> Area
<CMack> Code Findings(scanned by Famicoman)
<CMack> ---- ------------------------------
<gameman73> HA
<Pat> lol
<CMack> O_O
<!Moonlit> Famicoman_ is a bit of a dark horse like that
<CMack> Did I just win at Six Degrees of Thinstack?

Believe it or not, this basic exchange has happened more than once. I usually end up coming in a day or so after to dispense a few key details. I figured I should take a shot going through how I became involved with this document, so feel free to take off if you’ve heard this one. For everyone still left, read on.

The quote above already covers the main idea of what went on. For a few years here and there, there were some small projects to scan the number 867-5309 with all the prefixes and see who picks up. That’s a lot of numbers. A little under 1000.

The symbolism of the scan is in the number. In 1982, power pop band Tommy Tutone released the song “867-5309/Jenny” which describes a guy finding a girl’s phone number on (presumably) a bathroom wall. The band claims the number was made up, but the song became a one hit wonder. People everywhere started calling the number, asking for “Jenny,” causing thousands if not millions of unwanted calls.

For some perspective, all this was about ten years before I was born.

The band got into a big dispute over using a real (callable) number, and over the years most of these numbers ended up becoming disconnected outright. Even right now, thirty years later, the song still gets airtime. And, or course, someone out there gets tempted to call it.

As I touched on earlier, over the years there were a few scans done of all these numbers just to see what was still out there. Just for fun. A lot of the big names of the scanning scene contributed to these, and they were pretty cool little files to browse through. There wasn’t any schedule to these, they were just sort of done on a whim. In 2006, I saw a forum posting over at BinRev for “Jenny07” and decided to sign up.

In 2006, I was 15 years old and sort of branching out on the internet a bit more than I had before. I got into the historical side of computer hacking and phone phreaking, and set myself up modestly on an IRC channel or two. I didn’t know much but I knew I wanted to get my feet wet. Participating in a scan was a nifty idea to me. I’d put myself back in time 25 years and do things the old fashioned way. I’ve always followed the ideology of looking back at what’s been done to know how one should advance.

So I signed up for the 600 block, which contained my own area code. Now at this time, I didn’t have a cell phone. I also sure as hell was not going to dial 100 numbers and tie up the family land-line  What was a kid to do? You might remember an important promotion for a relatively young piece of VOIP software back in 2006. Skype was trying to get people to register, and were offering free calling credits if you signed up. So here I was with a handful of Skype credits and a few hours of free time on an evening after school. One by one I called the numbers and recorded what I heard on the line (if anything).

It took longer than you’d think. So much so that I didn’t want to do another block even though I had been planning to. It wasn’t difficult, just exhaustive. Still, it was a lot of fun seeing what would happen when connecting to each new number. I submitted my findings back to the forum post along with a few others and eventually my results were rolled into the document which was released to a few sites. There were plans to do this scan again every year or so, but it never seemed to materialize after this one.

So where are we now? Six years later, it’s a nice little reminder of one of my first collaborations in the internet world. It’s a pretty nice feeling seeing my name up there with some “famous” names and knowing I was part of something that was swapped all around the web, ending up on dozens of servers.

It’s a funny conversation starter and I honestly forget about it until someone brings it up and asks what they’re looking at. It’s one of those “Oh yeah, THAT” conversations usually followed by a “Let me explain.” While the file still floats around out there, I decided to toss it up over at the Internet Archive so it can be found always, by anyone. A nice little insurance policy.

Take a look, and have a laugh. I know I did.