Cell phone, Computer relationship

First I hope I'm asking this in the right forum.

Over the past year and a half or so I could be here at my desk and there would come a beep-beep-beepty-beep-boop-bawwwww sound and then my cell phone would ring (not through the speakers by the way). This will happen every-time I get a call. No problem I somewhat understand that.

But a couple of months ago, I would hear the same sound and start to reach for my phone, but it would never ring. To be clear it still makes this sound and then the phone rings, but now it does it some without the phone ringing after. So the beep-beep-beepty-beep-boop-bawwwww sound has doubled but not the calls.

Now 2 weeks ago something else has started to happen. I get a beep-beep-beepty-beep-boop-bawwww, and my phone rings. The beep-beep-beepty-boop-bawwwww and no call has stopped. But a couple of times a hour I hear beep-screeck-boop. This is much shorter than the beep-beep-beepty-boop-bawwwww, and I get no call.

And now my sons plasma TV is at times getting the same beep-screeck-boop, a few times (though not as often) and it is at the other end of the house.

Like I said I kinda understand the beep-beep-beepty-boop-bawww and then a call. But what is the rest of this noise?

Am I being scanned?

Thanks!

Well every so often your phone will have a scan of the available masts to see if there is a better reception to be had. You simply may have missed them before now, or the nearest mast could of gone down, and all the traffic is being shifted around more than usual, could be any number of things. Does anyone else have a mobile phone near your computer? Could be many many things, other radio interference?

Cell phones receive incoming carriers for a variety of purposes, not just for incoming calls.

Text messages, direct voice mail, updates, clock synchronization... the list is endless.

Could it mean your being "scanned"? Well... not sure what you mean by being scanned, but it is possible to eavesdrop on cellphones without them ringing. Same carrier wave to signify incoming call, but the cell phone doesn't ring.

Is it likely you're being monitored? Not very likely.

The likelihood is your phone is merely updating itself with the towers, or is accidentally losing it's connection and re-sending the hand-shake. (In which case, you probably want to ask why your phone keeps disconnecting.)


Do you experience more dropped calls lately?

Did you add any applications to it or change any settings? Like automatic clock update?

Its actually a type of "heartbeat" beacon used to keep you registered to whatever cell tower you are closest to. The standard beat is about 10 minutes between beats. It is a way to make sure the calls get routed to you and not to another state or town.

When someone calls you cell, it routes it to the last nearest cell you were "pinged" from.

The same thing happened to me before, and i thought exactly the same thing, "I'm being scanned", but the sounds came out from my computer speakers, a lot of "lightly" synths mixed with a voice, that sounded like a old western movie, saying: "we have you surrounded come out with your hands up". I remember that I've checked everything on my computer, seeing if a had any sort of publicity pop-up, but nothing.

I went outside a couple a minutes after that, because it was really intense, the sounds lasted about 10 minutes, and a looked at the sky but i didn't see anything.

That's funny you saying that you were being scanned, because at the time i thought the exact same thing.

...this happened on October 14th 2008 by way.....

Ahhh, I knew the answer would be something simple. Thanks everybody!

Frosti, thanks some spooky stuff!

reply to post by SlickSpeed


no, NOT AT ALL, it was actually quite funny