How can you tell if your phone is tapped?

i have not read this whole thread, so forgive me if this is repeating anybody. i lived in a country which routinely tapped people's phones and this was the subject of much concern and discussion amongst expats. one thing everyone who suspected they were being tapped (and some proved to actually have been tapped) was that the phone would ring at exactly the same time each week, with no one on the other line. usually it would be at midnight during the weekend. however, there are no doubt many ways of tapping a phone and different methods probably have different systems. (and the best probably none at all?)

a good book to read on this subject is "The Phone Book" by M.L. Shannon, who used to tap phones for a living.

-koji K.

When my phone was tapped I used to tell the other party, "I think someone is listening to this conversation." 90% of the time the phone call would terminate immediately. That was a good indication.

Also, if your phone is tapped look for soldering paste on your car, as they may have soldered a GPS device to track you, as was the case in my situation.

A few other things to look for:

Unplaced 911 calls (in the United States) resulting with a cop asking to look around.

Locking your door, going to work, and coming back finding it unlocked (even open). This may happen several times a week.

Your remote television control missing and then reappearing in an odd place a week or two later.

Strangers coming to your door, asking to mow the lawn or to drink some beers and then asking strange questions.

Originally posted by maxomad
A few other things to look for:

Unplaced 911 calls (in the United States) resulting with a cop asking to look around.

Locking your door, going to work, and coming back finding it unlocked (even open). This may happen several times a week.

Your remote television control missing and then reappearing in an odd place a week or two later.

Strangers coming to your door, asking to mow the lawn or to drink some beers and then asking strange questions.

I've come home a couple times to find my door unlock which was freaky enough in itself, but strange questions, remote missing for weeks, not happening here.
As I've stated before, it was bone chilling enough to have Feds at your door.

Stop worrying. Your phone is not being tapped. Unless you are under suspicion from the FBI or similar group. It cost lots of money to tapp a phone. Only the government really taps phones. They got better things to do unless like I said you are doing something wrong and if you are than they had a Confidential informant Rat you out. Rememeber if you did not do nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about.

I have interesting question. It seems that there has been suspicious activity in my neighborhood like lots of police and slow drive-by cars.....looks like investigators/lieutenant....and even under-covers. So, my question is what are the laws regarding tapping of land lines and/or dsl line and/or cell phone lines? I have heard the echoing in my phones before like another member said. I live by an elementary school and wonder why I always see police around in the parking lots as well. My backyard faces this elementary school and so it seems as if they are watching me. I have also seen cars slowly drive by with what appears to be a undercover lieutenant or detective. I am not sure about all of this. Just my suspiciouns. People think I am nuts. But, I am concerned and paranoid that I am being watched and or phone lines tapped. I have DSL so does that mean it is even easier to tap into the same line as my phone? Can the government monitor my e-mails too? How about conversations on cell phones? I have hears scanners pick up conversations from within a mile of 2 for cell phones. Is this true? Do we have any privacy? What would be the reasons or justifications for the feds or whomever to tap into my lines? Do I have any rights? Thanks. Paranoid and freaking out, RNL

Rnl,

I�m all for privacy believe me but before you get completely paranoid and scared answer this question. Are you doing anything illegal that would warrant an investigation? If the answer is no then you probably don�t have anything to worry about.

NO nothing illegal.....I have friends that I hang out with that do alittle more than drinking alcohol....but that is about the extent. So, I guess I should not worry. It just seems like weird in my neighborhood lately. I wish I knew what was going on. Oh well. Thanks for your comments. RNL

My best friend since high school works for Bellsouth and has seen countless taps on lines. The lines are tapped at the boxes you see at the corner of your neighborhoods. All the lines for that area come through those boxes. The tap looks like a small 3 inch cylinder that is clamped onto the lines. So, if you gots the balls or a friend in your phone company or if you ever see them working on the box on the corner, go take a peek and see if you see anything clamped onto the lines passing through.

My friend worked on the FBI building in Atlanta and had to be accompanied by an agent while there to do the work. When he opened the box, there were 5 taps on specific FBI phone lines. My friend told the agent "Don't trust your own employees?" Agent responded "We don't trust anyone".

I will ask my buddy about clicks etc because I keep seeing threads about clicking phones etc. I will ask him what causes it and post back to this thread.

And HI to any FBI reading this, you have a file and me and my family also, back in 1978 when you rented the house behind us to SPY on us(or was it my sister with big boobs jumping on the trampoline you wanted pictures of?). My father employed a large amount of cubans and that brought the FBI to our backyard. So hi guys, missed you all these years.

wire taping is prob old school. My advice is this : do nothing. If your neighbors ever come back...... then worry
::

they sell devices that will help to defeat tapping devices but nothing is 100% gaurenteed. The best way to determine if you are at risk of having your phone tapped is to examine your life. If you are about informing others of the new world oder, the corrupt goverment, gathering people together to fight against them, a high level goverment official, member of certain anti-goverment group or things of that type and you consider youself to be a threat to the new world oder, more likely than not you are being monitored.

FWIW,
I had a friend who knew his phone was tapped. It was checked out but not disabled.
He used the anwering machine to screen his calls. When the call ended, the line would not clear so you got a dial tone, you'd get messages like "If you'd liek to make a call, please hang up and dial again. "
This would happen after almost all phone meassages.
I've never seen it happen that often on any other phone.

Originally posted by DontTreadOnMe
FWIW,
I had a friend who knew his phone was tapped. It was checked out but not disabled.
He used the anwering machine to screen his calls. When the call ended, the line would not clear so you got a dial tone, you'd get messages like "If you'd liek to make a call, please hang up and dial again. "
This would happen after almost all phone meassages.
I've never seen it happen that often on any other phone.

Sounds like this was happening to your friend. electronics.howstuffworks.com...

that site offers everything you could want to know about the old fashion wiretapping technique.

I came across this thread while googling "how to tell if your phone is tapped" and thought I'd share my experiences.

First a little background:

I am a 20 year old artist/college student and am married to a man in the US Navy. He is a nuke on a fast attack submarine, and we are stationed in Guam and live on a navy base. FYI, I am NOT a Bush supporter, I despise the crooks and neocons in our government, and am seriously considering sailing away with my husband to an uninhabited island somewhere (there are actually quite a few in Micronesia). In fact, I would have voted for Al Sharpton had he been the democratic nominee .

Anyway, we sub wives are not allowed to discuss the boat over the phone because there have been instances at other bases of outside phone taps, and if we do discuss the boat over the phone and they find out about it, they will restrict boat info to the point where our husbands won't even be able to tell us when they are going underway or coming back until 24 hours before they leave/come back.

I recently called my sister back in the states (Connecticut), and we were catching up for about 45 minutes and then our convo turned to politics and the election. We are both staunchly anti-Bush, so our conversation went along those lines, nothing unreasonable, no threats or anything that would warrant Guantanamo, but all of a sudden I heard a series of loud clicks when there had been none before, and then there was loud static (loud enough to take the phone away from my ear), and then the connection was lost. After calling me back our political conversation continued as did the clicking. Finally I just said "Hi whoever's listening, I hope you're enjoying our conversation, but we're not going to say anything to get us into trouble; we save that for our letters, so now you're going to have to go through our mail!" We both laughed, but I was serious. After I got off the phone with my sis, I called my mom, and as soon as the convo turned to politics, the clicking started again, and we were cut off with static AGAIN! Now that is a pretty big coincidence, don't you think?

I've had a little bit of exposure to "telephone interception", and I'd like to tell you once and for all that unless it is some amateur, a PI or an underfunded local PD, you wouldn't know if it was "tapped" or not.

The reason being that serious "tapping" is done at the telephone exchange. No clicks, no subaudible buzzing. The telephone company flags a certain line for intercept and if neccessary executes a live feed to the Telephone Intercept monitors/interpreters/transcribers back at the agency's own office.

If you're hearing clicks and buzzes, then run some countersurveillance measures - should be easy enough if it's low level commercial stuff - or start taking your medication again. If a national security organization has you in its sights, you'd better be worried. But in this case, I don't think you have much to worry about.

Cheers,

NSA

Well the best way to know(and the only real way) is when you hear your voice coming out of the caset player in the court room. lol

That is weird...really weird, but if you're not hiding anything, you shouldn't worry about whether your phone is tapped. Some people, mostly crimnals or dangers to national security, are spied on by the NSC or NSA, and there are groups who say that's against our right of privacy, but privacy is just what harmful people need to get away with things. Think about it, those agencies stop disasters from happening all the time.

I'm not sure, but I would think someone is listening, but hopefully, if you're not doing anything wrong or illegal, then you don't have anything to worry about. Say the word, bomb, government, Kennedy, words like that, especially bomb, and see if you hear a click or a washing machine noise. If I say bomb, I hear a click. Big Brother is watching!

Well I'm definitely not hiding anything, it's just really annoying when you're trying to have an intelligent discussion about world events and you're phone cuts out, especially when we've been warned that phones have been tapped in the first place.

I always tease my family that "if I suddenly go missing and you can't contact me and you don't get any info about me, I'm probably being held in Guantanamo as an "enemy combatant".

I mean I've said things like "Bush is as bad as the islamic extremists, Bush is a terrorist, etc" but obviously nothing bad enough to get me whisked away somewhere...

I know here in Australia, the police, goevernment, whoever else, can
just get a court order for your phone records from the phone company.

Also static and a noise could also be from your copper line.


Just some thoughts anyway.