Colored boxes are not used only for phreaking. The colored boxes are also used to hack into your electric bill to lower your cost. .

             In the beginning, all long distance calls were connected manually by operators who passed on the called number verbally to other operators in series. This is because pulse (rotary) digits are created by causing breaks in the Digital Current current. Since long distance calls call for routing through a wide variety of switching equipment and Analog Current voice amplifiers, pulse dialing cannot be used to send the destination number to the end local office.

             Eventually, the demand for faster and more efficient long distance service caused Bell to make a multi-billion dollar decision. They had to create a signaling system that could be used on the LD Network. They had two options: To send all the signaling and supervisory information (eg., ON and OFF HOOK) over separate data links. This type of signaling is referred to as out-of-band signaling. To send all the signaling information along with the conversation using tones to represent digits. This type of signaling is called in-band signaling. The second seemed to be the most economical choice, and so, it was incorporated in Electronic Switching System. In the 1960"s the first Electronic Switching Systems were in use. Also, A.T.& T. decided to make a multi-billion-dollar decision to operate its entire long-distance switching system on twelve electronically generated combinations of twelve master tones. Those are the tones you sometimes hear in the background after you"ve dialed a long-distance number. They decided to use some very simple tones. The tone for each number is just two fixed single frequency tones played simultaneously to create a certain beat frequency. For instance, 1300 cycles per second and 900 cycles per second played together give you the tome for digit 5. All combinations add up to 2600 Hz.