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How To Tell If Your Cell Phone Is Bugged
Lauren Weinstein writes to point us to his essay on the realities of using an idle cell phone as a bug, as a recent story indicated the FBI may have done in a Mafia case. From the essay: "There is no magic in cell phones. From a transmitting standpoint, they are either on or off... It is also true that some phones can be remotely programmed by the carrier to mask or otherwise change their display and other behaviors in ways that could be used to fool the unwary user. However, this level of remote programmability is another feature that is not universal... But remember — no magic! When cell phones are transmitting — even as bugs — certain things are going to happen every time that the alert phone user can often notice."
Like a poster on the earlier story commented, why not simply connect one of those flashy LED thingies to your phone? My mom has them, and every time she's on a call, or even on an incoming SMS, the LEDs go berserk!! They don't even need batteries and power themselves off the cellphone radiation. Pretty foolproof method, IMHO.
I have a pay-as-go phone they are not anonymous. In many places (e.g. Germany), you have to register your details to get it, in other places your purchase details are used from the credit card to register it.
When I bought one with cash, just after I bought it, I received wrong number calls, but the people involved didn't seem to want to hang up like normal wrong number calls.
Them: "Is Mark there?"
Me: "I'm sorry, there's no Mark here, you must have a wrong number."
Them: "I'm sorry, are you sure you're not mark"
Me: "you have a wrong number"
Them: "Oh my mistake, thanks again erm Mr erm...." pauses to see if you'll complete the sentence.
This happened again and again and again, different scripts, but always a wrong number guy who just wouldn't go away. Until one day my wife answered and said my name.
Her: "No this is ???????'s phone"
After that I never received another wrong number call.
Now I put that down to random chance, since I'm not worth spying on. But then my wife got a new pre-pay mobile, again she paid cash, and sure enough she got the same pattern of calls. We were talking about it yesterday, when the phone rang, and it was woman this time, who again was a wrong number, but didn't seem to want to hang up.
Many different phone numbers used each time, we're building a list.
Hello,
Just as an experiment, I tried placing my cell phone into an anti-static mylar baggy and the signal went from 100% to 40% (or five bars to two). Repeating this with tin foil with a small opening to see the LCD (about 1cm^2) reduced the signal to 20% (or one bar).
I am wondering that if someone wants to have a private verbal conversation sans listeners on the cell phone, all they have to do is place their cell phone in metal box?
This would seem much more convenient than having to pull the battery out, as well as reduce wear and tear on the contacts or thin plastics of today's cell phones.
Perhaps someone who is a bit more familiar with electronics could explain whether or not a "tin foil hat" (or a metal box or foil bag, ala Enemy of the State) for a cell phone would work?
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
The calls I make from my home phone have the time of the call and the phone number called recorded.
The calls I made from my mobile had the time of the call, my location and the phone number called recorded.
All the websites I visit, have the domain name recorded.
All the emails I sent have the time of sending and the receipient recorded.
When I pay by credit card, the location, time and amount of the transaction are recorded.
When I cycle into town, I go past about six cameras - I'm recorded by each one.
All of this information is available to the State without any form of judicial oversight. A policeman on a whim could keep a very close watch on my life.
So I'm not being paranoid here - this list *IS* the list of the monitoring conducted on all of us.
I've committed no crime. I'm totally innocent.
Why am I being monitored? why does the State have to keep records of who I talk to and when I talk to them and where I am when I talk to them? am I suspected of something? I'm not. So why? because I *might* do something? that's outrageous! and in fact it's proper tantamout to suspecting me of something - it is suspected that I *might* commit a crime, which is just a weaker version of we *do* suspect you comitted a crime.
What people don't realise is that although the State has always recorded plenty of information on us, the game has changed because of computers. Computers plus surveillance isn't just more of the same; it's something utterly new and *different*.
"Nice conspiracy theory, but you do realize that you're identifiable without your cooperation if you have a cellphone, don't you?"
I don't think they are interested in me or my wife, (not that they know she's my wife). I think they are profiling all telephone calls for patterns of interconnection.
We both make international calls to the far east, and I think we score highly on some equation in a computer somewhere. International calls from prepay phones in foreign languages where the phones were paid for in cash and the extended guarantee wasn't accepted and the top up cards are all paid for with cash.
If you only know us from our mobile phone logs we must look very suspicious if you were a spy agency involved in call profiling.
They're not necessarily bill collectors.
I'm currently stationed overseas, and I got into a car accident while on leave in the States. The other party decided to sue for damages (I love living in America) and my insurance company played the "he's overseas serving the country, are you honestly going to force him to come back to deal with this?" card, the judge agreed, and delayed the trial until my tour's up, which at the time was more than two years.
My wife has been getting calls on her cell phone (she's still in the states) that go like this:
"Is binarytoaster there?" "...No, he's overseas." *click*
It's honestly that fast from the way she puts it - they just ask if I'm there, and upon getting that answer they just hang up. Never say who they are, never leave a number, nothing. Been going on for at least a few months now.
She was completely confused by why anyone would do this, as was I, until I remembered the lawsuit. So they might not be collectors, but they're still just as annoying.
Yeah, but some aren't. I had an interesting run in with some credit card scammers earlier this year. I got a call from my credit card company about 10 minutes after I bought lunch one day. It was from the fraud early warning system, which I'd gotten a few times now. These were usually due to me flying around the country, or taking extended road trips, or making very large purchases ($900 in appliances, $1500 in furniture, etc.). I wasn't too worried about it.
.com that was based in the same state as this old address, and donations to a charity of a few cents.
This time, though, I it asked if I could verify a purchase for "theme park tickets," "appliances," and some other things. I told it no, and an amazingly easy 15 minutes later, my account was frozen, all the obvious charges were rolled back, and a new card was on the way, along with some paperwork for me to flag other charges that the CC company missed.
The scammers had my old address apparently. I knew this because they tried to order a convection oven (who'd have figured?) and have it shipped to my old address. My guess is that this is the address in whatever database that got cracked. When I did get my next statement, I noticed a few charges to some random "music store"
It turns out that credit card company had cancelled far more of these "song" purchases, and "donations." The thieves had made, over a few weeks, donations of varying amounts from a few cents to about $2, and random song purchases of about $1. It seems that they were trying to establish that I was "normally" spending money in the area where I used to live, and also verifying that my card was still legit.
So yeah, some criminals are dumb. Others are not. The fraud detection systems we have are pretty good though.
Michael C. Hollinger