Well, that was creepy.
I just paused my iTunes a few minutes ago to hear something my roommate was saying, and about halfway through our conversation I heard about a second of what sounded like a cell phone conversation in my headphones. I couldn’t make out any of the words. It faded in then faded out.
These was just a pair of $15 Sony headphones, the kind that clip around the back of my ears. Is there any way I could have actually picked up a call on them? Or a bit of radio broadcast?
My wireless headphones picked up the neighbors conversations when she moved in. I really didn’t want to hear her medical problems and such when I was trying to hear my music. Remember you cordless phones are not private people, and anything you talk about can end up heard by somebody not using your phone. Get a corded phone, a cell phone or talk only about stuff you can afford the neighborhood to know.
How long ago was this? I used to have no problem at all picking up cordless phone conversations on my police scanner, but when phones switched over to 900MHz, it didn’t work anymore.
Mine was a 2.1 Ghz headphone system. I take it her phone was a 2.1 Ghz cordless phone system.
It died about three years ago, and she moved away a couple years before that.
I should have phrased my question more clearly - why does this happen? My headphones aren’t cordless so I’m confused as to why they were picking up any kind of transmission.
The device you are plugged into has a circuit that is a simple radio receiver. The amplifier circuit can be a receiver. It used to often happen with tape recorders and other transistor devices when I was a kid. Our television sets constantly picked up the nearby radio station. The stronger the signal the less well tuned the receiver needs to be to pick it up. I can’t explain in detail any longer how a radio works as I’ve forgotten most of it. It is not hard to make a simple radio receiver.
Cell phone? Not anymore, since the datastream is encrypted. Once upon a time it would be feasible when cell phones operated with analog modulation.
Current cordless phones, perhaps, but most nowadays are digital and many are spread spectrum.
Reread what I posted.
I said cell phones are safe.
Congratulations, do you want a cookie?
BTW, you didn’t explain why, I did. I want a cookie now.
:rolleyes:
Also, you are not entirely correct when you fail to qualify your assertion about cordless phones lack of security. Not all cordless phones are insecure. And your landline is no less susceptible to eavesdropping than the cordless phones with spectrum hopping or a rolling code inversion.
Even if cell communication wasnt encrypted you still couldnt hear it. Its digital, it would sound like noise if it attenuated with headphones or speakers. Im sure you’ve heard that buzz that GSM phones make. It would be similiar to that.
Cordless phones tend to be digital too. So, again, an analog headphone would not be able to pick it up. It would sound like noise or bleeps.
Im guessing your headset picked up a analog radio from somewhere. FM/AM, CB, HAM, etc.
I’m not going to nitpick on which models of phones are not secure. My entire point was there are many cordless phones out there that are not. Go badger somebody else as I’m not going to get into big waste of my time with you over the models that are secure or not. Obviously any of the more advanced models that operate digitally or employee security schemes are not going to be heard on a radio headset are they.
It’s extremely unlikely to pick up cell phone transmissions, even the old unencrypted analog AMPS signals, with a device not specifically designed to pick them up. What you probably picked up was CB or ham radio, or maybe aviation or military; these all use AM (or SSB), which can readily be rectified to discernable audio by a simple diode junction.
I’ve seen GSM cell phone signals interfere with all sorts of devices, but the interference takes the form of clicks or pulses of static.
When my daughter was a baby (she is 18 now) I remember her baby monitor would pick up the neighbor’s phone calls sometimes. It became a common past time to sit around, even when we had company, listening to their conversations.
You were pointing out that you had already answered the question.
I pointed out you hadn’t.
Now you’ve moved the yardsticks from saying “you cordless phone are not private” to “many cordless phones are not.”
What’s the problem here?
The noise you are hearing are radio broadcasts. The wires that run through your headphones are likely unshielded, and for some reason they pick up these broadcasts. Because there is no amplifier, it sounds really faint.
ETA: This has happened to me before when I had these really cheap computer speakers.
You might be able to find out what frequency your wireless headphones operate on by checking the base. It’s likely they operate in the 900 mHz or 2.1 gHz range; these frequencies are the most common for cordless phones and for wireless headphones. If your neighbours are close enough, you can pick up their cordless phone signals.
Cell phones can’t be overheard this way; their signals are digital. Though you can occasionally hear a distinctive buzzing pattern over speakers if a cell phone is broadcasting near enough to the amplifier, you won’t hear anything intelligible.
So I just tried to call my boyfriend and the wierdest thing happened. I have a Samsung Galaxy S III and everytime i tried to call him I kept getting other people’s phone conversations. I could only hear one side of the conversation and they couldn’t hear me. So i hung up and tried again and this kept happening 10 TIMES in a row! I ended up calling my boyfriend off of my house phone and having him listen in on what i was hearing (I tried calling him again and put my cell on speaker) it was wierd. I got the same conversation like two or three tries then the next two or three tries i got another. I know this thread was for listening in on headphonescordless phones and but it’s kinda relevent that this happened to me on my cell phone. any thoughts people?
It appears that you are hitting a software and or translations (data base) bug somewhere either in your cell phone provider’s network or your boyfriend’s network that is connecting your call to the wrong line. These things can happen. People talk about conversations being encrypted, but they are not encrypted end-to-end, you can accidentally be connected to the wrong conversation. It’s rare, but it happens.
You can call your cell phone provider and complain, but you are unlikely to actually be able to talk to somebody who will understand what you are talking about. They will probably just run you through a script like “Did you remember to power on your phone?..Is the battery low?..Did you hit the call button?” etc.
The path phone calls takes is very very convoluted now. Although a modern mobile phone is encrypted on the wireless leg, it is decrypted and converted to send it through the various lines and switches. If it needs to get to a landline it must be converted all the way back to analog. A fault anywhere along this route could cause weird issues. If the call coming from your home landline was OK, you might guess the fault was in your mobile phone carrier’s network. But it need not be, the networks are so messy and complex that it could be almost anywhere. The mobile and landlines phone calls could be routed in totally different ways even if they are finally making to the same place. About the only place the fault won’t be is in the wireless link from your mobile phone to its cell. Given the nature of modern phone systems the fault could be a simple glitch in a switch somewhere that could simply clear itself sometime later. (By switch I mean a network packet switch - which is the device responsible for making the temporary connections along the route between phones in a call.)