Can telecommunications providers see and store our touch-tone selections?

[xMax]

I have always wondered about that.

Clearly all telecomunications companies can see and store every long distance call made. And they probably also store every local number too. Although that may only be accessible to higher level personal.

But the thing that i always wondered about is wether the telecommunications company can actually see and store the touchtone keys that are pressed by the customer when he or she is navigating through a touch-tone voice interface that is commonly employed to serve customers in commercial call centers.

 

[CTho9305]

That would be very easy to do. Touchtone tones are easy to detect.

 

[xMax]

But what level personal at the communications company would have access to this kind of information?

I asked this question in the offtopic forum, and they guy who replied to me said that there is no way that a low leverl customer representative would have access to such information.

Im thinking that only the highest level personals would have the authority to pull up such records. This has to be the case since it would make no sense for some minimum wage rep to be able to see the passwords i used to check my Visa balance when calling the Visa customer service and dealing with their touch-tone voice integrated calling system.

Would you agree with me on this?

 

[oynaz]

It would not make sense to give access to such sensitive data to anyone on the executive level. What would a top-level executive do with data like this? Nothing legal!
I think it is safe to assume that only a few of the technical staff have access to that kind of data.

 

[xMax]

Good to know. I had a feeling that this was the case, but wasn't sure.

Thanks for the replies guys.

 

[f95toli]

Originally posted by: xMax
Im thinking that only the highest level personals would have the authority to pull up such records. This has to be the case since it would make no sense for some minimum wage rep to be able to see the passwords i used to check my Visa balance when calling the Visa customer service and dealing with their touch-tone voice integrated calling system.

Would you agree with me on this?

I am just guessing since I don't know what the laws are like in the US. However, if they are similar to the ones in most countries in Europe I suspect that NO ONE has access to that information UNLESS they have a court order. Most large telecom companies have a special department thay handless request from e.g. the police and I suspect they are the only ones that are allowed to access information like that, I don't think they are allowed to share said information with anyone else.
Remeber that telecom companies do not own the information they transmitt. Hence, generally speaking they are not allowed to access it unless there is a very good reason.

 

[dkozloski]

This type of info is stored in the phone anyway. The crooks are buying high end phones on Ebay and retrieving all this stored data using simple software. Most people are either too lazy or too ignorant to totally erase this stuff before selling the phone. The higher end the phone, the more likely your data mining efforts will pay off.

 

[jersiq]

I work in a wireless communications company, and in a technical position there (Switchboard Technician)

The only equipment that we have that allows you to monitor a call, is the CALEA equipment. There's none of this "Hidden Room" with a machine that has 200 TB of storage (that's what it would take to store voice recordings for only a couple of days in a busy metropolitan market)

The CALEA equipment can only be used with a court order. Locally, we have no visibility to our CALEA equipment, it is run by our Legal Department. But if I recall correctly, it has a limitation to how many calls it can "fork", it would be impossible for that box to record every call. Alternatively, it would be a waste of processor time to allow any of the other systems dedicated to call processing to database this information.

Because my position requires complex levels of troubleshooting, I ususally get "the best of the best" access to call record systems. We are only concerned with setup and tearing down your call, not what happens in between. On any call record I have analyzed, there is not "in-call" DTMF records.

 

[xMax]

Thanks a bunch guys.

I can now proceed by using my calling card to dial the local number provided on the calling card where i can then call anybody that i want without having it registered with my telecommunications company or appearing on my phone bill for my parents to see. Which is awesome!

Your replies were golden.

Anandtech Forum Rules!

 

[Texun]

Originally posted by: f95toli

Originally posted by: xMax
Im thinking that only the highest level personals would have the authority to pull up such records. This has to be the case since it would make no sense for some minimum wage rep to be able to see the passwords i used to check my Visa balance when calling the Visa customer service and dealing with their touch-tone voice integrated calling system.

Would you agree with me on this?

I am just guessing since I don't know what the laws are like in the US. However, if they are similar to the ones in most countries in Europe I suspect that NO ONE has access to that information UNLESS they have a court order. Most large telecom companies have a special department thay handless request from e.g. the police and I suspect they are the only ones that are allowed to access information like that, I don't think they are allowed to share said information with anyone else.
Remeber that telecom companies do not own the information they transmitt. Hence, generally speaking they are not allowed to access it unless there is a very good reason.

Going off-hook, dialing, date, time, tone connection and call duration will be recorded in the switch but not shared unless there is just cause or a court order. Say you dialed 911 and the call did not go through. The phone company can pull the records from the switch, see if dial tone was made, what numbers were entered and if there was a response on the other end. This can be useful in a court case to determine what happened as well as when and why the call failed. This is certainly not something a customer service rep would have access to.

 

[Specop 007]

Originally posted by: jersiq
I work in a wireless communications company, and in a technical position there (Switchboard Technician)

The only equipment that we have that allows you to monitor a call, is the CALEA equipment. There's none of this "Hidden Room" with a machine that has 200 TB of storage (that's what it would take to store voice recordings for only a couple of days in a busy metropolitan market)

The CALEA equipment can only be used with a court order. Locally, we have no visibility to our CALEA equipment, it is run by our Legal Department. But if I recall correctly, it has a limitation to how many calls it can "fork", it would be impossible for that box to record every call. Alternatively, it would be a waste of processor time to allow any of the other systems dedicated to call processing to database this information.

Because my position requires complex levels of troubleshooting, I ususally get "the best of the best" access to call record systems. We are only concerned with setup and tearing down your call, not what happens in between. On any call record I have analyzed, there is not "in-call" DTMF records.

Hammer. Nail.

To put it simply, yes we can. But not every Joe in tghe company can do it, and those that do have access to do it have far better things to do with thier time anyways.

 

[davesaudio]

In a traditional telco switch the tone detector is a resource switched in and out as need.
since there is not a 1:1 relation of detectors to lines it is not sitting there monitoring
your call after you are connected. Part of switch engineering and capacity planning is managing and sizing these resources inside a switch.