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Cordless Phones and Scanners


tmk-nj

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My wife and I bought a new cordless phone last year and use it all the time. We have our suspsicions that are neighbor might somehow be listening to our calls. Is this possible? Can a personal scanner be configured for frequencies used by a cordless phones?

 

We have heard him say things to us about us that we know we never told him.

 

Any experts out there who know this technolgy?

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My wife and I bought a new cordless phone last year and use it all the time. We have our suspsicions that are neighbor might somehow be listening to our calls. Is this possible? Can a personal scanner be configured for frequencies used by a cordless phones?

 

We have heard him say things to us about us that we know we never told him.

 

Any experts out there who know this technolgy?

 

All wireless technology is vulnerable AFAIK.

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Yeah, 100% possible. A friend of mine in high school had some really creepy guy listening in on all of the conversations between her and her boyfriend. She was the cheerleader, he was the quiet reserved nerd. Classic case of freaky.

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Thanks for all the replies!

 

This neighbor of ours also has a pretty attractive wife who is always on the phone. She even walks around outside on it.

 

It would be cool to tap into those conversations to hear what the hell she talks about. LOL

 

 

 

My wife and I bought a new cordless phone last year and use it all the time. We have our suspsicions that are neighbor might somehow be listening to our calls. Is this possible? Can a personal scanner be configured for frequencies used by a cordless phones?

 

We have heard him say things to us about us that we know we never told him.

 

Any experts out there who know this technolgy?

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Thanks for all the replies!

 

This neighbor of ours also has a pretty attractive wife who is always on the phone. She even walks around outside on it.

We would need pictures to validate this claim, please submit evidence and further guidance will be forthcoming.

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Time to start making some fake drug deals and sex calls on the phone?

 

:beer:

 

Or bragging about how good of a :o his wife can give!

 

:lol:

 

Arrange to call a friend and talk about how the town is going to be taking everyone's property on your street for some such public works project or to build a mall or something like that. You heard this from a friend in the town government. Make sure you tell him that it's going to happen in a couple of years and you don't want to try and sell your house because it won't be announced for another 8 months and it just wouldn't feel right to you having to lie to someone, but getting less than your house is worth from the government really pisses you off. You may even want to make up an amount the properties will be purchased for.

 

You may have to make a few calls about this because he may not be listening all of the time.

 

Then see how long it takes for a "For Sale" sign to pop up on the front lawn. :lol:

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My phone operating instructions book says my phone has 1,000,000 security codes. Is that considered Spread Spectrum or something else that keeps the phone signals from being picked up?

 

Digital security codes

One of the first measures made possible by the invention of digital technology was security coding. Every time a handset with this feature is placed into a base unit, one of up to 100,000 digital codes is randomly assigned. This code is then continually transmitted during calls. In order to communicate, a handset and a base unit must have this code.

 

Digital security codes do not prevent scanners from picking up your calls. The codes merely prevent eavesdropping by other people with similar handsets and make it impossible for them to use your phone line to make their own calls.

 

Spread Spectrum Technology (SST)

Since binary code is being transmitted (as opposed to analog pulses), digital signals make call interception more difficult. However, eavesdropping is still possible. To further protect cordless privacy, spread spectrum technology was invented. SST disassembles a voice signal, "spreads" it over several channels during transmission, and then reassembles it back into its original form. It is almost impossible for people to reassemble an SST signal on their own. And in addition to better security, since the FCC permits SST phones to use higher output wattage than traditional cordless phones, SST phones deliver better range.

 

Higher frequencies

Most inexpensive radio scanners—the ones you typically find in electronics stores and/or your local discount drugstore—cannot access frequencies above 512 MHz. However, if eavesdroppers are willing to spend a little more money, they can listen in on a 900 MHz frequency, and beyond.

 

On the other hand, even the pricier scanners can't cover the 2.4 GHz frequencies used by the newest, most advanced cordless phones.

 

http://www.marcusball.com/opinion/telecom/...ss_security.htm

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Don't know how much technology has changed, but for what its worth about a decade ago my buddy's mom used to sit at her scanner and listen to the cordless phone calls made by her neighbors.

 

The neighbors were two college-aged girls that had very active sex lives. The mom said listening to their calls was like having a real-life steamy soap opera to tune into each day. I'd get a landline.

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Thirteen or fourteen years ago, our community theater decided to go "high-tech." (For us, that meant spending $150 on a couple sets of two-way radios from the local Radio Shack. You know the ones, a headset wired to a belt-pack receiver/transmitter.) Fine and dandy until the night of our tech rehearsal, the last runthrough before going into full dress rehearsals. And wouldn't you know, someone a couple streets over from the theater decides to call Aunt Martha and fill her in on the family vacation, and just happens to "find" our frequency with their cordless phone.

 

I would normally have been amused. However, this show had a ton of lighting and SFX cues, and I was calling all of them from the front of the house. Or trying to, anyway. I still don't know how I kept from pounding that radio into dust that night.

 

Moral of the story: if you're using a cordless phone, assume you CAN be heard, and adjust your lifestyle accordingly.

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I'd get a landline.

 

Moral of the story: if you're using a cordless phone, assume you CAN be heard, and adjust your lifestyle accordingly.

 

This is not true. I posted the info above.

 

If your phone has spread spectrum, then it is very, very difficult to eavesdrop. If someone is listening to you over DSS - you got serious @%@#$ issues because you are talking about equipment sophisticated enough for terrorists or NSA ops.

 

The quick and dirty about DSS is that you are broadcasting over many, many frequencies AT THE SAME TIME. So, someone with a scanner can't listen to you because there isn't one frequency to tune in to. They would need to know all the frequencies you are broadcasting on, the code pattern, and then be able to take all the info in real time and reconstruct it all to listen in. It ain't happening to any average joe on the street.

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