From the rival website: http://au.answers.yahoo.com/answers2/frontend.php/question?qid=20071115225055AAkpq8u&show=7 "Tapping a cellphone is difficult as it is a time variant and encrypted signal. Tapping a house phone is much simpler, check the phone junction box outside of your house/apartment (just a warning, if it is an apartment building entering the junction box may be seen as illegal in certain jurisdictions and you do so at your own risk) and see if anything odd, basically anything other than wires, is connected. Don't poke around too much inside the box, if you disconnect something your phones (or your neighbors' if you're in an apartment building) may stop working, just look then close it back up. Tapping phones from a more centralized location is easy and undetectable, but requires the power of either a major telecom or a government on your side (and there's nothing you can do about it, or really even do to detect it). There are other, much more sophisticated, ways of detecting phone taps that mostly involve connecting something to the line that watches for electrical noise generally produced by a recording device but those are expensive, not easy to come by (if you don't make it yourself), and generally not needed as any small-time tapper is likely to just connect something in the junction box. On your cell phone you can rest easy, the difficulty involved in tapping that puts it out of the reach of just about everyone but surveilance experts and governments." Avoiding Phone Taps When you want to avoid phone taps on your line, one of the things you need to do is get a bug sweeper. These devices can help you find phone taps in your home that may be allowing others to get information that you do not want them to have. Regular bug sweeping with devices that you can easily find and buy over the Internet are key to ensuring that your confidential phone conversations remain confidential. It is important to note, however, that there are other ways to avoid phone taps. Most telecommunications companies have had to make it easier for law enforcement to tap phones since 1994 and the passing of the law known as CALEA. Getting VoIP service over the Internet will protect you to a certain extent for the time being, although a recent FCC ruling demands that VoIP provides start building in easier third party access. So, while you can probably detect phone bugs from the likes of amateur spies, bounty hunters, and some private investigators, detecting phone taps from law enforcement is a little trickier. Part of this problem is that they use hardwired solutions for their surveillance. This means that they tap into the phone line and create a physical bridge to their location. They can listen in without being near your house. Cell phones might be able to help you avoid phone taps, if you use them to make the important and confidential calls out of your area. However, when in the vicinity of your cell phone, these are actually the easiest calls to intercept. You should always be careful when using a cell phone to discuss sensitive information, as it is possible for nearly anyone to hear it in the right conditions, inadvertently or on purpose. In any case, it is very difficult to avoid phone taps by law enforcement or military personnel because of the nature of how they tap a phone. But even though you may not detect bugs from law enforcement, it is still worth your while to invest in some counter surveillance bug sweepers. This way you can still avoid revealing information when someone else is trying to nail you by using phone taps. http://www.webraydian.com/content/view/185/32/

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