Question about scanners and cordless phones ...

[gmccall]

Got a question for the people in the know about scanners: About a year ago my neighbor showed me his home scanner setup and let it slip that he has his system modified so he can hear cordless phone and cell-phone conversations. He has a 50 foot antenna and a couple thousand dollars worth of scanning equipment and said he can listen in on calls up to several miles away. Needless to say I dumped my cordless phone that very day and have been using mostly land-lines ever since.

Well I picked up this phone at an auction the other night and was wondering if he would be able to listen in on calls from it:

Radio Shack 2.4 GHz Digital Spread Spectrum Cordless Telephone - ET-1129

Was just wondering if there is anything available to non-government/non-military consumers like him that would allow him to listen in on my calls if I use this phone? I know that no cordless phone is going to be 100% secure but was curious. It's no big deal but I like my privacy...

 

[gmccall]

bump

 

[TechnoKid]

as far as i know, a scanner can still pick up on digital spread spectrum calls.

 

[VictorLazlo]

It depends if his scanner goes up to 2.4GHz. Spread Spectrum is a gimmick that does not necessarily prevent someone from listening to your conversation. I've had sucess and failure attempting to tune into various 900MHz spread spectrum phones.

 

[VictorLazlo]

Also, I couldn't find that exact phone on radioshacks site. Do you have a link?

 

[Amused]

http://www.consumersearch.com/..._phones/fullstory.html

More expensive digital spread spectrum (DSS) phones digitize your voice over a slightly longer range and offer added security with a "cipher key" that scrambles conversations across frequencies. In spread spectrum, the phone transmits and receives signals on several channels at once; if a signal is poor on one frequency, the clear signal on another frequency will compensate.

I doubt anyone with a common channel scanner is going to be able to hear a DSS phone call.

 

[VictorLazlo]

Here is a little write-up on spread spectrum technology from howstuffworks.com. Here are my personal observations:

The box says "digital spread spectrum" on it. All this really means is that the phone is capable of frequency hopping. What they don't mention is how often the phone actually uses it. I tested out a number of 900Mhz phones while living in the dorms. (900MHz was the style at the time.) Although the phones were capable of hopping to another frequency, they rarely ever did it, unless the signal got weak, or they bumped into another signal. And even if the phone did hop, re-aquiring the signal was a trivial task.

In my experience, the phone did not operate in the way that was claimed on the front of the box.

Fortunately for you, most COTS scanners don't go to 2.4GHz, although I haven't been keeping up with these things much lately.

 

[Heisenberg]

If it's a true DSS phone, it'd be nearly impossible for him to listen to the call.

 

[VictorLazlo]

One limitation I forgot to mention is that 90% of the time, I could only hear one side of the converstion.

 

[gmccall]

Thank you all for the replies! Unfortunately is seems the Radio Shack no longer makes that model so I can't provide a link for it. It did come with the box and instruction manual - Is there anything specific I should look for?

Anyway, thanks for the help as my knowledge in this area is fairly nonexistant...