When this whole "mobbing" thing began to happen, my first response was to get offline and to be happy that I have a land line at home. Then I realized that phone phreaking had been redeemed as a tactic against me, just for that reason.
That realization came after I entered by bedroom one day and saw that the Intercom light on my digital phone set was turned on.
That was the last time I used the handset. Now it's stored away, in hopes that someone with forensic capabilities might need it. I continued to use the answering machine/central unit for this wired/wireless phone for a time, and then as I realized that the same people who were trying to encourage me to leave my home were also forwarding telemarketing calls to me and shouting clipped messages like "MOVE OUT!" over them, I disconnected the main unit and removed all of the parts from the house.
I still have the land line but a contracting friend who knows more than I do about phreaking has told me that cell phones are much more secure than the analog ones. I keep the combo wired/wireless phone so that I can tape record my voice mail for the insults and threats that the phreakers put over the forwarded messages. There are microphones you can get from Amazon.com for a mere $10 that have an earpiece you put in your ear, and then you can record anything you hear in a telephone call as you press the receiver to your ear. I've only listened to a few but am confident that some digital enhancement will bring up the levels of the recordings.
If you try anything like this, you need to know whether you live in a one- or two-party state. I live in a two-party state so I save my recording, for the most part, for inside my house and for calls where the messages have already been recorded and consent is implicit. A defense for two-party recording is that the recording device is in plain view, and I do from time to time resort to this strategy when I feel I am in danger because of the harassment I continue to endure. I also saw online that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies do permit the breaking of some laws for the greater good. When you are, as I am, in a situation where you are taken advantage of based on the fact that you are a woman living alone, and in a situation where your attempts to abide by the law are also being taken advantage of by people who are indulging in the wholesale eavesdropping and recording of all of your calls and communications, I figure that it might not be too surprising that one finds protection by attempting to document the illegal threats, coercion and other harassments that are illegally broadcast into one's private space.
One of the more onerous aspects of this phone phreaking may be the fact that my landline calls are not at all private. When I pick up the phone, I hear the voices of those harassing me, those who are known to me from my neighborhood for the most part. I considered how they might be "tapping" my phone and then eventually I read that phone phreaking codes can turn at least an analog phone into a party line. That would explain how I can hear them and record them even, but they are not heard by the other party.
So much for the safety of a land line then. At this point, I keep it and my voice mail as a means of recording the harassing calls that I have concluded are not subject to the two-party rule. I expect to get a cell phone but expect it to be hacked as long as I continue to ignore the demands of these people, who seem to be mobbing for real estate, for me to get out of my home of nearly five years. I also figure that as soon as I have a cell phone number, it won't be private and I'll likely have to change it again or hope they stop. But at this point I'm not sure whether their stopping is solely related to my refusal to be "mobbed" out of my home, or whether it is also related to the fact that when the whole thing first started, I took two laptops out of service and put them into security deposit boxes. You see, perhaps only to scare me but who knows... these people were intimating that they had put a root kit on my systems.
More on that later.
That realization came after I entered by bedroom one day and saw that the Intercom light on my digital phone set was turned on.
That was the last time I used the handset. Now it's stored away, in hopes that someone with forensic capabilities might need it. I continued to use the answering machine/central unit for this wired/wireless phone for a time, and then as I realized that the same people who were trying to encourage me to leave my home were also forwarding telemarketing calls to me and shouting clipped messages like "MOVE OUT!" over them, I disconnected the main unit and removed all of the parts from the house.
I still have the land line but a contracting friend who knows more than I do about phreaking has told me that cell phones are much more secure than the analog ones. I keep the combo wired/wireless phone so that I can tape record my voice mail for the insults and threats that the phreakers put over the forwarded messages. There are microphones you can get from Amazon.com for a mere $10 that have an earpiece you put in your ear, and then you can record anything you hear in a telephone call as you press the receiver to your ear. I've only listened to a few but am confident that some digital enhancement will bring up the levels of the recordings.
If you try anything like this, you need to know whether you live in a one- or two-party state. I live in a two-party state so I save my recording, for the most part, for inside my house and for calls where the messages have already been recorded and consent is implicit. A defense for two-party recording is that the recording device is in plain view, and I do from time to time resort to this strategy when I feel I am in danger because of the harassment I continue to endure. I also saw online that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies do permit the breaking of some laws for the greater good. When you are, as I am, in a situation where you are taken advantage of based on the fact that you are a woman living alone, and in a situation where your attempts to abide by the law are also being taken advantage of by people who are indulging in the wholesale eavesdropping and recording of all of your calls and communications, I figure that it might not be too surprising that one finds protection by attempting to document the illegal threats, coercion and other harassments that are illegally broadcast into one's private space.
One of the more onerous aspects of this phone phreaking may be the fact that my landline calls are not at all private. When I pick up the phone, I hear the voices of those harassing me, those who are known to me from my neighborhood for the most part. I considered how they might be "tapping" my phone and then eventually I read that phone phreaking codes can turn at least an analog phone into a party line. That would explain how I can hear them and record them even, but they are not heard by the other party.
So much for the safety of a land line then. At this point, I keep it and my voice mail as a means of recording the harassing calls that I have concluded are not subject to the two-party rule. I expect to get a cell phone but expect it to be hacked as long as I continue to ignore the demands of these people, who seem to be mobbing for real estate, for me to get out of my home of nearly five years. I also figure that as soon as I have a cell phone number, it won't be private and I'll likely have to change it again or hope they stop. But at this point I'm not sure whether their stopping is solely related to my refusal to be "mobbed" out of my home, or whether it is also related to the fact that when the whole thing first started, I took two laptops out of service and put them into security deposit boxes. You see, perhaps only to scare me but who knows... these people were intimating that they had put a root kit on my systems.
More on that later.
RSS Feed