RE: Phone Switches + telephone banking etc

From: Jacek Lipkowski (sq5bpfat_private)
Date: Mon Jun 10 2002 - 00:08:22 PDT

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    On Fri, 7 Jun 2002, Kayne Ian (Softlab) wrote:
    
    > Why's that? I've never heard of a bank making that statement. A cordless
    > phone is pretty much a minor risk anyway, if someone wanted to go to the
    > trouble of listening in to your call to the bank, they'd be better off
    > splicing the phone line outside your house. IIRC DECT fones are scrambled in
    
    this situation is similar to ethernet - would you rather tap wires (even
    if they were outside the building), or listen for accesspoints within the
    area?
    
    > some way, so you can't just tune in with a reciever. Non-DECT fones have
    
    just because it's digital, doesn't mean you can't listen to it :)
    unless it's encrypted of course.
    
    > enough trouble finding the base station and making a clear call through even
    > paper thin walls, so someone sitting outside your house is unlikely to get
    > anything through a few layers of concrete...
    
    i wouldn't be so sure. once upon a time people used phones that transmited
    49MHz from the set and 46MHz from the base station. using a cb radio
    receiver and a simple home made converter i could listen into the base
    station from very far away. on a 1/4 gp antenna i could hear a base
    station from over a kilometer away (at night when the channel wasn't very
    crowded). a 3 element yagi antenna improved the range even further.
    
    the only problem with listening to cordless phones is that there are too
    many on a single channel transmiting at once, so you hear only nearby
    stations.
    
    i haven't personally tried listening to 900MHz phones, but i would suspect
    that they are even easier to listen to. the higher the frequency the
    easier it is for radio waves to bounce around obstacles. you can also make
    a directional antenna with higher gain easily.
    
    jacek
    



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