My daughter strongly suspects the crazyass father of her son (they never married) has tapped her cell phone. He has known stuff that he should not. Apparently it's stupid easy to do although not legal under most situations. Is there any way to detemine if the phone has been tapped. Does it show up on the tapper's phone or computer if he has accessed calls or texts?
make up some outlandish story and text it to someone she trusts that doesn't have any contact with him.. see if he picks up on it..
My first answers is that it is unlikely he has tapped or is listening in on phone calls.
Does he know her account password and have access to her handset?
He may have set it up so that her text messages are forwarded to another place. The advice here would be to contact the carrier and change her account password as well as change any email account passwords she may have.
Does he work directly for any of the cell companies?
He may be looking into her account without authorization. This will not give him the text messages but could give him knowledge of what number her texts are coming from.
If yes, contact the carrier and ask to speak with the fraud dept. This report will be taken very seriously. Every time an employee goes in to an account, there is a reporting trail. If they find he has accessed the account, he will be fired!
Of course, him without a job likely does not help the overall situation.
Even if he does not work there, you may still want to report the suspicion of fraud to the carrier and they will take it from there.
If he is paying for the phone, it's his phone but if not I'm pretty sure it is illegal.
She can take it to her carrier and have it wiped back to stock or checked for any "extra" hardware I suppose. The police probably have some dept that could help too but convincing them you are not a paranoid lunatic might be harder than finding it.
novaderrik wrote: make up some outlandish story and text it to someone she trusts that doesn't have any contact with him.. see if he picks up on it..
Great idea here.
Is there phone GSM or CDMA?
Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: If he is paying for the phone, it's his phone but if not I'm pretty sure it is illegal.
A felony actually. In pretty sure. I'm sure if I'm wrong someone will link an irrelevant law and troll me for it, though.
EDIT: Yep. Felony.
N Sperlo wrote:Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: If he is paying for the phone, it's his phone but if not I'm pretty sure it is illegal.A felony actually. In pretty sure. I'm sure if I'm wrong someone will link an irrelevant law and troll me for it, though.
In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:
Malaysian law is very relevant in the US.
More than likely its like Jrw1621 said access to the account via easily guessed passwords. I'd call the cellphone company make sure that there's no one else on the account, change the security questions to something really obscure or incorrect so it can't be found online, and change the passwords (default voicemail password is usually the last 4 of the SSN.)
Time for a new phone and prepaid coverage. $50 Nokia off Amazon and $30/mo for Straight Talk pre-paid SIM, port phone number, he's cut completely loose at that point.
pres589 wrote: Time for a new phone and prepaid coverage. $50 Nokia off Amazon and $30/mo for Straight Talk pre-paid SIM, port phone number, he's cut completely loose at that point.
I'd agree with this apart from the porting the phone number bit. I'd get a new number.
In reply to BoxheadTim:
Why, it's just hassle for her and anyone she wants to deal with, and if they have a kid together he's probably going to need that number anyway. I don't know the situation but it seems like some kind of "this woman is hiding with my kid now!" kind of legal issue possibly. Or I could be totally confused. She can figure that part out for herself with the help of a lawyer.
Don't trust the compromised phone.
novaderrik wrote: make up some outlandish story and text it to someone she trusts that doesn't have any contact with him.. see if he picks up on it..
Actually that is the way we test security, each person, or output stream gets a different very realistic story. What ever gets reported back is the leak.
It is incredibly difficult to hack a specific phone without network help. IE listen in to conversations, acting as a man in the middle. It is much much easier to hack voice-mail and get txt logs if you can guess the password to the account. Almost always set at the factory to SSN or a general password.
99.9% of the time it is something like this. Unless the attacker is amazingly adept
spitfirebill wrote: My daughter strongly suspects the crazyass father of her son (they never married) has tapped her cell phone. He has known stuff that he should not. Apparently it's stupid easy to do although not legal under most situations. Is there any way to detemine if the phone has been tapped. Does it show up on the tapper's phone or computer if he has accessed calls or texts?
No, it is not easy to do. In fact, you would have to hack into the cellular provider's network or do something equally difficult in order to listen to phone conversations. Text messages could perhaps be received via spoofing a phone's ESN and/or SIM, but that is also extremely difficult for anyone who is not very technically inclined.
More than likely, this person has another source of information.
-An Engineer for a Large Telecommunications Company
Sky_Render wrote:spitfirebill wrote: My daughter strongly suspects the crazyass father of her son (they never married) has tapped her cell phone. He has known stuff that he should not. Apparently it's stupid easy to do although not legal under most situations. Is there any way to detemine if the phone has been tapped. Does it show up on the tapper's phone or computer if he has accessed calls or texts?No, it is not easy to do. In fact, you would have to hack into the cellular provider's network or do something equally difficult in order to listen to phone conversations. Text messages could perhaps be received via spoofing a phone's ESN and/or SIM, but that is also extremely difficult for anyone who is not very technically inclined. More than likely, this person has another source of information. -An Engineer for a Large Telecommunications Company
if i've learned anything at all from watching detective shows on tv- and i haven't- it's that you just need to type faster if you are having problems hacking into another computer system..
So, Bill, is the phone GSM or CDMA. It makes a difference.
Bill, You may not know the answer of GSM vs CDMA so the easier question is, what cell company is your daughter with?
Sorry for the delay. I posted this and then was out for several days.
Its a Droid phone and her service is with Verizon. BTW, it is her own phone.
She went by Verizon and had them look at it. Not sure what they said.
If you Google "tapping a cell phone", it shows software that can be used to tap the cell phone. All you need is the software and the person's phone number. It says you can listen in on the conversation and intercept their text messages. You can forward it to a computer and save for listening later.
The baby daddy is in the Army, doesn't work for a phone company. He isn't a smart as he thinks he is, but he was once a deputy sheriff in the RIchmond area. He is a control freak who got it from his old man.
I'll sell you software that listens to cell phone conversations for cheap! And if you order in the next 10 minutes, I'll throw in the deed to a nice bridge in Brooklyn.
Sky_Render wrote: I'll sell you software that listens to cell phone conversations for cheap! And if you order in the next 10 minutes, I'll throw in the deed to a nice bridge in Brooklyn.
10-4
I will send you a certified check through my agent. Just wire me back any overage.
Yea. I From what I understand, verizon runs CDMA. Government agencies use CDMA more often than not because it is so hard to crack. Nothing is impossible, but I doubt there is much to worry about.
N Sperlo wrote: Yea. I From what I understand, verizon runs CDMA. Government agencies use CDMA more often than not because it is so hard to crack. Nothing is impossible, but I doubt there is much to worry about.
CDMA is almost impossible to hack, which is why the NSA built back doors into Qualcomm's algorithm.
GSM is easier, but you still need to either be in the same cell as the phone you're tapping or have access to the cellular provider's system.
In either case, you need specialized equipment and software that you're not going to get just anywhere.
Could it be that he hacked her computer or email?
Not that an average guy could do it but...
fasted58 wrote: Could it be that he hacked her computer or email? Not that an average guy could do it but...
Email is my guess, especially since most people use passwords that are easily guessed by someone who knows the person.
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