Dennis Dan "Denny" Teresi (born August 14, 1954), now known as Dennis Terry, is an American radio

disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile ...

and former

phone phreak Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term ''phreak'' is a ...

most famous for being the person who introduced

John Draper John Thomas Draper (born March 11, 1943), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch, or Crunchman (after the Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal mascot), is an American computer programmer and former phone phreak. He is a widely known figure within the ...

to the field of phreaking. Both Draper and Teresi were operating

pirate radio Pirate radio or a pirate radio station is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license. In some cases, radio stations are considered legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are received—especially ...

stations in the

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popu ...

area. Their initial contact came when Teresi responded by telephone to one of Draper's pirate broadcasts. In the documentary ''

The Secret History of Hacking ''The Secret History of Hacking'' is a 2001 documentary film that focuses on phreaking, computer hacking and social engineering occurring from the 1970s through to the 1990s. Archive footage concerning the subject matter and (computer generate ...

'', Teresi is identified as an expert in social engineering. Teresi's mastery of the phone company's

jargon Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a partic ...

allowed him to speak with phone company employees and trick them into revealing more information. Teresi, who is blind, has hosted an

oldies Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music (broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock) from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as ...

radio show on

KSJS KSJS (90.5 MHz) is a college radio station that broadcasts 24 hours a day from the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, California, United States. The brainchild of Professor Clarence Flick, it went on the air on February 11, 1963 ...

since 1976 under the name "Dennis Terry", and for several years he also operated an oldies record store in San Jose. He was elected into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame as a member of its Class of 2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Terry, Dennis 1954 births Living people Phreaking American blind people Radio personalities from California