Mobile Phone calls Interception: How to tap someone's call with your own cell phone

The issue of Spying on other people’s mobile phone calls has been a fantasy for many people. especially Parents who want to know whom there children are taking to, couples who are too suspicious of another and want to track their calls, employees who want to know their boss business plans, security, intelligent and law enforcement agents trying to get information from a suspected criminal, an intruder trying to steal information from his victim etc. This article will describe some methods how this spying is performed. However be advised that mobile phone spying is illegal in most countries and you need special permissions to do this. The purpose of this article is not to tell you how to intercept other people mobile or cell phone calls, but better inform you about the tactics used by hackers so that you can make your phone calls private and secured.

 

There are several ways of spying a mobile phone some of which include the following........

1. Installing a Spy Software on the victims phone

This is a very easy technique for tapping a mobile phone call. This method is used by individuals mostly to check if their partner is cheating on them. For this method to succeed you need to purchase a spy software and physically install it on the victim’s mobile phone. There are lots of cell phone spy software available online. you can buy or even download it trial version at www.spyphonetap.com www.flexispy.com Such software offers features like the following

• Listening to the phone calls
• Get SMS, call logs and emails emailed or sent as SMS to you
• Track victim’s location on map
• Making spy calls using the victim’s balance or credit
• Receiving a phone call on your cell whenever the victim makes or attends a call
• Use victims’ mobile phone to bug them and listen to their everyday conversation even when they are not using their cell phone
• Record all incoming and outgoing calls on a PC

So to prevent this software from getting installed on your mobile phone, always protect your phone with password and never share it with any person or even your best friend because they can be the potential hacker.

2. Sending service messages

This spying technique was developed by a security company from Germany. In their technique they send an invisible text message to the victim mobile phone. The message enables the victim mobile phone to make a conference call with the hacker without the caller and victim’s knowledge. The nature of service message (SMS) is similar to those of the messages send to customer to update their SIM settings like GPRS or MMS settings. A hacker can send a similar message that can reprogram the victim’s mobile phone. After the victim’s mobile phone has been reprogrammed each incoming and outgoing call is conference with the hacker without the victim’s knowledge. The victim will pay for the conference call charges. To avoid hacker’s number in getting listed in the call history on the mobile phone bill (the monthly statement), the attacker can choose a 0800 number instead of his cell number that is redirected using VOIP to attacker’s own mobile phone or even a PC.

Another method is by dialing (on the victims phone) **06* followed by the attackers phone number and then #. after dialing the above code successfully the attackers phone will always ring each time his victim has a call and all conversation will be taped.

The victim can cancel it by dialing ##002#

3. Decoding the cellular encryption

 

This is a pretty complex task and can only be done by individuals with lots of resources and technical knowledge. The mobile phone conversations, SMS, MMS and internet are done through electromagnetic waves. These waves are very similar to the ones use for watching TV transmission using an antenna. However the tricky part is that the mobile phone waves are encrypted or coded before and after transmission.

If someone hacks the encryption algorithm he can decode the conversations and listen to them. The disadvantage of this technique is that you need to be physically place an antenna near in a specific area where you want to spy. Moreover hacker will start picking all sorts of calls and he may need to filter call by a particular cell phone number (IMSI) or IMEI. Some people also say that mobile phone companies provide the encrypting techniques to the law enforcing companies to track and monitor criminal activities. The devices made for such task are known as IMSI catchers.

Similar techniques are used in UK, US, France and several other countries like Iran by intelligence agencies. It was reported once on BBC news that Iran bought such equipment from Nokia Siemen Network (NSN) at very high price to monitor their citizens. NSN manufactures the base stations or masts (mobile phone towers) and therefore they know their encryption and decryption techniques as it is built into the system.

4. Requesting Conversational Information From Service Providers

This technique for mobile spying is often used by police mostly after a crime. They request the cell phone service providers to provide Call Detail Record or CDR of a particular cell phone numbers. A CDR contains several fields some of them are given below:

• Called Party (number receiving the call)
• Calling Party (number making the call)
• Date and time
• Call duration
• Result of the call (a number describing whether the call was successful or not)
• Mobile number that was billed for the call
• Mobile tower id that was used by calling party
• Mobile tower id that was used by called party
• Event type (Voice, SMS or GPRS)

All of the above fields can help in an investigation. It can also be used to monitor a person’s activities (mobile calls) and hence can be used for spying as well.

Hope all of the above techniques will help you improve your phone privacy.