Bug/Listening device detection

I have reason to believe that a family member is being bugged by someone she knows. It's not in the phone...she only uses a cell phone. It's not in the computer. she doesn' tuse it. That leaves only one possibility. A listening device in the apartment. It would have to be inexpensive--due to the other persons finanacial state and not too high tech. That person isn't to technology savvy. Hints, tips, tricks to detecting this device on the cheap?

Thanks!

Amazing.

Interesting.

The bug could be anywhere. In a wall, furniture, ceiling, rug, appliance, or picture hanging on the wall.

I do not see a solution, because there could be many bugs, of many types.

The only fail safe solution would be to go live out in the woods where nobody could find you and nobody would care.

Or, the bugged person could just live life as normal and not care at all that they are being bugged .

After all one only lives a hundred years. Why waste it worrying about a spy.

Each day goes by that is of worry, is wasted. Have some fun I say.

True ...but information is being gotten. It has to be a listening device based on the type of info.. mainly listening in on calls. Since it's cell phone use only and the info would only matter to the other party we've deduced that there is some kind of device and that it must be inexpensive and not related to tapping a cell phone. ( too expensive and sophisticated). Thoughts are:

1. cheap listening device being picked up by car in parking lot or being sent to recording device close by. This should be easy to find.
2. cell phone hack but again thats too sophisticated and expensive. even so.. how would you know?
3. outside device but again expense leads us to believe that it's number one.

emp the place.. gl

2nd line

I have built many bugs and actually used to sweep for bugs for law firms etc. It generally takes a lot of skill with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment to be mostly certain that you're bug free. Even if it is a common person on a low budget you run the risk of them hiring a professional private investigator to do the bugging, meaning that medium grade bugging equipment could be used.

However, if you believe that the person is doing this on their own, using easily and cheaply available gear then there are a couple of things you can try.

First go through everything in the building with a fine comb tooth. This means unscrewing everything that has a screw and taking apart anything else that comes apart.

Failing that, take a regular FM receiver and tune it all the way to one end of the band. Turn the volume up all the way and slowly start tuning through the entire band. Repeat this in every room. Many easily available bugs for sale on the internet use this band. The idea is that if you tune past the bug's frequency the receiver will squeal from audio feedback just like when a singer puts the microphone to close to the speakers.

Failing that borrow or buy a scanner and do the same as above through every band that the scanner receives. Make sure the scanner is capable of receiving the 48Mhz-50Mhz band, all of the 300-500Mhz band, and all of the 900Mhz license free band.

If the suspect person has regular access to the place they could be using a 20 dollar digital voice recorder the size of a thumb drive and a thorough physical search will be the only way to find it.

reply to post by dainoyfb


Thanks will do as you suggested!

What dainoyfb said.

Most cheap bugs are designed to be received by an F.M. radio, usually at a frequency not commonly used by your local KLONEFM. This could be the lower end of the scale say 88MHz - low 90MHz's.

Buy a cheap radio, sit in the next room (closed door) and play distinctive music in the target room. Slowly tune your cheap radio (paying particular attention to the lower end of the scale) until you hear your music. This would obviously work better with analogue tuning as opposed to digital (finer control with more feel to it).

Alternatively, rip your house/apartment to pieces to find the device or watch midget amputee porn at full volume to force the listener into resignation out of sheer disgust from the C.I.A., N.S.A. or any other T.L.A. (Three Letter Acronym) organisation.

Why don't you confront the guy, kidnap him, waterboard him and just keep like pulling toenails out and stuff till you get the required confession!

Nah seriously tho you could contact the police, then you would maybe get a professional bug sweep for free?

Take a radio and play background music to over play any of what being said.

If this is someone without money for special equipment they will not be able to separate the music from anything said.

If you can get a little high tech a high pitch sound just at the edge of human hearing played load enough will work too.

Also check your windows for shiny little dots of reflective tape.

There is laser units that can detect the vibration of window glass caused by you talking.

reply to post by amazing


Your room doesn't have to be bugged, cell phones are easy to listen to up to two miles away; and it's cheap to do, usually around $10 or less if you have some of the parts already.

A TV remote control, some wires and an aluminum pie pan or wok works well as a dish antennae. By simply going up or down through the TV remote control channel button you can tune into all kinds of peoples private conversations that are within 2 miles of you, that are using cell phones. Simply run the wires from your TV remote control over to your stereo audio input and the other wires to your directional antennae and you can listen to people in stereo every time they get on their cell phone.

reply to post by RussianScientists


You are being funny I take it? That's great I will give you a star on the understanding you are joking - you are joking right?

Originally posted by RussianScientists
reply to post by Now_Then

 

It's real.

How do I take a star back?

OK first off what part of your device is going to decode the data received and convert it into an output suitable for the stereo? 2) Are mobile phone conversations usually sent in stereo any way? when there is one mic and one speaker in each phone, of course it makes sense now! - double the amount of data in the voice stream

3) Any old TV remote? So they are all the same, every model? good to know...

If we use a bigger pie tin can we pick up radio broadcasts from the future?? No that would be silly now wouldn't it?

[edit on 4/2/2010 by Now_Then]

reply to post by Now_Then


It's real.

Originally posted by RussianScientists

 

It's real.

Can you back that up? I think Now_Then covered the basics pretty well. Even if there was a particular TV remote that had a processor clock frequency which hetrodyned with a particular cellular band all of the Cell systems in cities are digital now which means not only would you need a circuit that could understand and translate the digital language that cell phones use but also you would have to sort out which digital information was for each particular phone since several phones use the same frequency and data stream through a high speed multiplexing protocol which is fast enough that even when several phones are online at once we can not tell that they are all time sharing the signal.

I think somebody has been reading the Anarchist's Cookbook. The same one which suggests that if you plug your toaster into the phone line it will foil an FBI tap.

Edit to clarify

[edit on 4-2-2010 by dainoyfb]

The main thing to rule out is human agency. The last thing to suspect is a bug. Instead, try and work out who she talks to. The likeliest channel is someone she knows being responsible for leaking information. Maybe not directly...they could be chatting to a third party with an interest.

Bugs can be bought cheaply from websites. Cheap models tend to be a little smaller than matchboxes. They transmit on short wave that can be picked up on dirt-cheap transistor radios. A straightforward test is to play a CD (pick something distinctive and clear) in the apartment. Leave the apartment and dial through the short and medium wavelengths of a radio. If you pick up the CD, it's bugged.

Before any of these actions, I'd assess the character of your 'family member.' Is she rational? Is she predisposed to 'drama?' Has she a history of unusual incidents that attract attention? Has she had several stalkers in her past? If the answer to any of these is 'Yes' I'd remain detached and watchful.

Without more details, it's difficult to get a better understanding of the situation. Being objective, it's even worth considering that you are considering 'bugging' someone and are looking for information to succeed in the plan.

if you can rule out 'humint' (a snitch), i'd try to follow potential power sources for such a bug.

if it's battery driven and off the shelf, it's likely hideously large and easy to find and offers miserable endurance. furthermore, electronics usually run on low voltage DC so that narrows your selection down a lot, make sure your little power supplies are all accounted for.


if all else fails, unplug all your appliances (ALL of them, no joke) and switch your entire power net over to full voltage (look up 3AC and you'll know how WARNING: illegal and dangerous if you leave the juice on and/or have no clue what you are doing), which will promptly KILL any undesired device running off your grid. be careful, though and don't let it 'cook' or you could start a fire, five seconds should be plenty, although if properly built, it would just blow a fuze and die immediately without issue.

anyway, good hunting, when you find the bug, maybe you should care to perform a play of sorts, where you fake plotting to off this guy, in full detail so he can sleep a little 'better'

[edit on 2010.2.4 by Long Lance]

Thanks for posts guys! I have some one going over there to check her apartment for her. I'm 10 hours away and it just wouldn't be practicle at t his point. It could well be a person that she is trusting to tell stuff to that is the source of the information leak. This possibility is being brought to her attention. I'm taking the cell phone info into consideration but it does seem a bit advanced and unlikely. If the apartment is bugged then it could be anything. Of course this is assuming that he has a key or got access there. More likely is, In my mind, and item planted there that contains the bug. This is the first thing my person is going to check for and a high possiblility. I'm afraid if the police are involved they won't find anything and furthermore what are the chances that they would even sweep an apartment?

Here is a fairly inexpensive bug detector you might consider purchasing. Don't know how sensitive it is in detecting devices but it's a lot cheaper than going to town.

Pocket Sized Bug Detector and RF Sniffer

Anybody know where we can get a copy of Anarchist's Cookbook to download?
Line 2.

recently there was an article about hacking the gms band ,it cost about 30.000 to build a device from scratch that can decrypt the signal so you can listen live to the calls.

www.pcworld.com...


but i wouldent go that far unless you have a science campus near by or something in that direction.

instead i would do as many here has suggested and get a fm/am band "sweeper" and start from there if your still certain that its your friend thats being bugged ,

but i would assume the possibility that the party on the other end of the phone is the one leaking

and that for rumors to travel you dont need a bug just two very chatty females/males that cant keep their jab shut.

Originally posted by Alxandro
Here is a fairly inexpensive bug detector you might consider purchasing. Don't know how sensitive it is in detecting devices but it's a lot cheaper than going to town.

Pocket Sized Bug Detector and RF Sniffer

This is little more than a toy that will produce multiple false positives having you dig into walls hunting for ghosts. Real bug detection equipment costs thousands of dollars and requires advanced knowledge of how radio waves propagate and how bugs operate. Take a look at the websites "high performance" devices. They are not even built on proper circuit boards but instead on cheap prototyping perf-board. They are not crystal stabilized and use components that gobble ridiculous amounts of power from the battery. This crap has been around forever and they are selling it as if its great stuff.

Alxandro, if you have no idea about a subject you shouldn't be offering advice.