The Phone Losers of America (PLA) is an internet prank call community founded in 1994 as a phone phreaking and hacking e-zine. Today the PLA hosts a prank call podcast called the Snow Plow Show, which it has hosted since 2012.
History
The Phone Losers of America were founded by Brad Carter and Zak (el_jefe) in 1994, in an era when landlines were plentiful. Zak currently maintains a USA payphone directory.
The PLA text files continued until mid-1997.
In the early 2000s, with the introduction of companies offering Caller ID Spoofing, groups such as the Phone Losers of America became notable in their utilisation of the service for prank calling, for example in the spoofing of law enforcement and corporate office numbers.
In August 2015, the Columbia Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri, featured the PLA in an article about a series of "strange calls" received by local residents who had signed a petition against a crosswalk construction project. The article quoted an FBI representative who allegedly told the Tribune that the calls to Columbia residents "would likely be prosecuted on the local level." The case was treated as a federal matter, and was presided over by Judge Marco A. Hernandez of the Federal District Court of Oregon.
Activities
thumb|The PLA giving their panel at the 2004 [[Hackers on Planet Earth convention]]
The PLA maintains an archive of answer machine messages in text-based format, which Motherboard have described as being the "ringtones of their day".