Phones "Chirp" every night at same time-- tapped?

Factual Questions
1

One of our phones emits a small chirp every night at the same time. Does anyone know what might cause this? We suspect that our phones may be tapped. This may sound ridiculously paranoid, but we have very solid reasons to think so. We don’t think it’s any government agency doing the tapping, but my husband’s ex-wife. She herself is dumb as a brick, but she’s a trust fund baby and can afford to hire private investigators who would know how to do wiretapping. It’s exactly the sort of dumbass, bad-tv-mystery thing that would appeal to her. In the past, she has hired detectives to follow us, watch our house, and we are positive she listened to our house via the baby monitor, until we figured it out and unplugged it.

We are considering switching to telephone via high-speed cable. Is that immune to tapping, at least from amateurs?

2

There are three other, more miundane possibilities–

  1. The phone company is testing the lines for some technical reason.
    2)An automatic modem, like the kind some vending machines have, is mistakenly dialing your number.
  2. Your phone is an el cheapo model, & local radio broadcasts are tripping it.

Have you considered getting a restraining order against the nutcase? It can include a prohibition against hiring private detectives.

You might also consider stress management counciling, as you are beinging to sound…interesting. :dubious:

3

Would the phone company be testing the lines every night?

Counseling (for us, anyway) isn’t going to do anything to make the nutcase leave us alone, so I don’t see how helpful it would be.

The restraining order sounds like it has possibilities, though. I had no idea you could restrain someone from hiring PI’s. What would we have to prove to a judge to get such an order?

4

[list=1]
[li]Maybe, if there are persistant problems. An automatic system might check all the lines in a given area, every night.[/li][li]I was hinting that you are letting this situation get to you, and that’s not good for your health. Strees management may be something you’ll need, especially if the ex manages to avoid getting run over by a truck for the next 30 years. She may be a semi-permanent issue, learn to cope or she wins.[/li][li]I am not a lawyer. Talk to one licensed to practice in your area. But I’m pretty sure it’s possible.[/li][/list=1]

5

Could be someone dialling your number and hanging up just as it starts to ring. Next time it happens dial *69 (star-six-nine) to get the number your last caller dialled from.

6

My phones occasionally chirp (partial ring) right at midnight. I assume it’s just line testing, but never called my phone company to ask since it’s such a minor issue. Since I’m pretty confident that my phones aren’t being tapped, I suspect there are plenty of other reasons.

Besides, why would tapping a phone cause it to emit noise? Seems awfully counter-productive if you are trying to hide a tap. My vote goes with the mundane explanations.

7

The Master speaks

8

Why don’t you see if she responds to a message left as bait over the phone? If you can produce a reaction from her based on something said only over the phone, then you’d know. How did you ascertain she’d plugged into the non trust fund baby monitor?

9

The Master on “ghost rings”.

10

Is there anything Cecil doesn’t know? Wow, talk about an obscure question. Switch out the phone Minnie, see what happens.

11

Happens to me as well. Cecil explains it perfectly (see ENugent’s link) If you really want to rid yourself of your paranoia, narrow down the time it happens, and ask your neighbors. My neighbors get the chirp the same time I do.

Wire taps are pretty much passive, they wouldn’t gain anything by sending a surge down your line every now and then. The phone company, on the other hand, get’s to find downed lines.

12

She went out of her way to let us know that she knew the EXACT content of conversations going on in the house. While of course, being careful to not give us enough evidence to take to the police. At first we weren’t sure whether the PI’s were overhearing conversations, or if she had installed a nanny-cam setup of sorts before I moved in. (Despite there being a restraining order for her to not enter the house because of the divorce, my husband knows that she would enter the house during the day while he was at work. After we met and I moved in, she couldn’t do that anymore. And, for her, cost is no object. A lot of people might like to do these thing to their exes, but simply can’t afford to.) She also claimed that my older stepdaughter (who was 6 at the time) was reporting our conversations to her. While we knew his daughter was being browbeaten to report everything to the psycho, we thought it was highly unlikely that a 6 year old could report lengthy conversations verbatim, as was apparently the case. We started hearing some feedback on the baby monitor, and it finally occurred to us that a baby monitor is a radio transmitter. We took the portable reciever outside and found that the entire house could be heard from a spot where our neighbor (a retired police officer) had seen an unfamiliar car parked for long periods of time. He also reported seeing the psycho drive by and talk to the person sitting in the car. We unplugged the baby monitor, et voila, the psycho suddenly no longer knew what was being said in the house. I was in favor of leaving the monitor plugged in and trying to gather evidence for the police, but my husband just wanted to stop being spied on.

I was thinking we might hear noises due to a tap because of the amateur nature of it. I’m sure if we were being tapped by the FBI or some similar agency, we wouldn’t hear a thing. But obviously, if we are dealing with the sort of PI who is willing to engage in illegal surveillance, we aren’t dealing with the highest standards of professionalism.

13

Referring to Cecil’s column: I get the same chirp on my line at around 10:30 pm each night - but only on the one old phone in the kitchen. The other two phones (same model as each other, but not as the kitchen phone) don’t chirp. This makes sense when compared to the line testing explanation.

This phone will also chirp a second or so before the phones begin to ring, when an incoming call comes in, so it does just seem very sensitive to stuff happening on the line.

14

Since nobody appears to have touched on this…

Voice over IP is essentially untappable from outside the house (theoretically it could be done with a packet sniffer, but it would be very difficult for someone who wasn’t a networking expert); however, if you have your home’s phone wires tied into it, the possibility always exists that a tap could be installed inside your home. If you just have a single phone connected to it, no issue there.

15

I used to work in SBC’s Network Ops Center, and this was a common complaint. There is a value in software that prohibits the ALIT (automatic line insulation test) on a per-line basis, and updating that would usually fix the problem.

16

I think we will switch to VoIP. Even if the psycho isn’t tapping our phones at the moment, I’ve looked it up and it’s pretty easy to set up an outside the home tap on a conventional line. Why make it easy for her to spy on us? Plus, it also means we won’t be giving any money to Qwest, which is always a good thing.

17

I have a couple of cordless phones at home and they each chirp. Strange though is they don’t both chirp at the same time, even though they are on the same line. The phone in my office chirps whenever I get online with my PC. The main phone in the kitchen does not. (sensitivity settings and different features)

The kitchen phone chirps whenever a computer generated call comes in. It’s filtered from telemarketers, so all I get is a chirp. But not the one in my office, filtered also.

The phone in my office chirps when the battery charging light comes on. So does the one in the kitchen. (the smoke detectors too :D) You’d think I was raising birds. Especially if the stove timer goes off w/ em. Actually happened once.

I took something outta the oven when the timer went off. I had spilled something in the oven and it set the smoke alarm off. Then the phones started ringing and someone was at the doorbell. I just stood there kinda dazed… I know it sounds like BS but I swear it’s true.

The kitchen phone chirps everynight at midnight when the phone auto adjusts the time/date.

and finally the office phone chirps when the computer does its regular weekly maintenance update.

The damned phones ring more when nobodys on 'em it seems.

I can adjust the sensitivity though and some other features and stop all of it if I was really annoyed. Actually, I kinda prefer knowing things are running smoothly. I do most of my business via phone lines.

I do hate talking on the damned telephone though.

18

Another possibility:

Back when Uninterruptable Power supplies were expensive, I used to repair and refurbish them myself. I have a lot of expensive gear (My projection TV, for example, had bulbs that might blow if the power went out, leaving them hot without the fan cool-down cycle - and those bulbs were $300 a pop) The one that ended up in my bedroom let out a chirp most mornings before 6 a.m. It normally only emitted such chirps for voltage spikes (voltage drop-outss made a different sound) Since it was a UPS, I knew it wasn’t tapped - or plugged into the phone line, and I decided it was the power company switching in a local generator, especially since it occurs at a different time in the winter vs. summer.

A brief glitch in the power could affect a cheap or sensitive phone.

ON ROOM CONVERSATIONS:
There is a device known as an infinity transmitter that will send conversations in a room over the phone line. Basically, the bugger calls your bugged phone and sends a signal that blocks the ringer, but ‘opens the mike’, turning it into a bug even with the handset on the hook (the hook is a simple switch, easily bypassed)

Sometimes you may hear a brief chirp or partial ring when the bugger calls you, but rarely at the exact same time each day (Yeah, they could put it on a timer, but there are many reasons why this is seldom done.) Nowadays, you can just *69 after a chirp, and if you consistently get connected to your last legitimate incoming call, you can rest easy

Its pretty cheap and easy to build a concealed line-powered room bug that runs on line current. How many wall-wart DC adapters do you have for clocks, answering machines, phones, and other 24/7 devices? Any one of them could have a line powered bug of respectable power. It might take some time and care to install a bug in an existing wall-wart, but it would take mere seconds to replace a wall-wart with a pre-doctored one. Also, it was always possible to install a bug inside an outlet - self-powering, potentially long range and very unlikely to ever be discovered. How often do you replace outlets?

My point? Either get an expensive sweep [not my suggestion, unless you have really strong concerns] or chill out. Sorry but that’s pretty much the choice. It stinks, but that’s how it is.

Be comforted, however. There are few things as boring as monitoring a room bug, transcribing the tape from a voice-activated unit or reading the transcripts. Your hubby’s ex may derive sick pleasure from bugging you, but trust me, you’ve already exacted your revenge by burning up the precious hours of the Ex/PI’s life by subjecting them to the stunningly banal conversations of someone else’s daily life - or worse making some slob transcribe them.

19

(just catching up after several days away from the boards)

AFAIK, infinity transmitters only worked with the old “Ma Bell” type phones, you know, those heavy, unbreakable ones with the carbon mic and the 2 pound (OK, I’m exaggerating) receiver, made by ITT that said “property of AT&T” or some such. I’m pretty sure any modern electronic phone (especially a cordless) would not be susceptible to this bugging method.

20

As a crane operator I have to communicate with my guys using a walkie talkie type radio. It has 8 channels and we are ALWAYS having to change channels because the frequencies seem to be the same or harmonics to certain cordless phone frequencies.

We can hear only the transmit side of the conversation,and not what the speaker is hearing.

We have tried to talk to the people with no response whatsoever.
(However it MIGHT create a slight impulse to the cordless on that particular frequency.)

Might be a slight hijack…BUT that might be where she is getting SOME info…

BTW those baby monitors come in VERY clearly as well!!