Private Investigator Tips to Snoop Around With Phones
With rumours of the government tracking us through the use of technology and subterfuge, it’s only fair that lay folk should learn a bit about snooping too. A good starting place is to learn the tricks and tools used by private investigators, who are experts at probing and unearthing information from areas that are best left a secret. These tips might help you in an increasingly cut-throat world.
One of the most valuable ways to gather information is the telephone. But how exactly do they do it? Here are some of the hottest tips:
- Power Usage of Your Smartphone – Researchers have recently found out that Android phones release information about your location to all the apps that are installed on the device through the power consumption of the phone. Since the permission of the user is not required to know the power usage, any app can access this information. This is called the PowerSpy technique. Even less harmful apps that communicate over the network would be able to relay this information. It basically makes use of the fact that the transmissions of a cellphone utilise more power to get in touch with a given cell tower as the distance increases. They use machine learning techniques to study the phone’s average power consumption over a given period of time irrespective of variables like a phone conversation or an app that consumes a lot of power. The only disadvantage to this technique is that the feature needs to measure beforehand the behaviour of the power usage as it travels along a certain route. This means that you cannot track the person along a route they have never been to before.
- Blocking the Caller ID – Detectives need to make anonymous calls under a false pretence or name. In UK, you can prefix the number with 141 before dialling the number. That would block your number. However, if the recipient of the call has a caller ID, it will appear as “Blocked Call”, “Unknown Caller”, or some other label. It’s only slightly less suspicious than a call from a detective service. As an alternative, you can call via voice-mail. Since the call will be routed through the voice-mail’s system, your number will be blocked. Other services like pre-paid phone cards, or a VoIP system like Skype filter use a third-party number to filter the call, thereby blocking the number.
- Spoofing the Caller ID – This technique essentially involves getting a fake number to be displayed on the recipient’s Caller ID. It is called a “presentation number”. VoIP services are generally used for this purpose. There have been a number of spoofing services that have cropped up recently that allow you to make a number-spoofed call from a PC or smartphone.
- Special Phone Line – Private investigators usually have an unpublished line in their office to receive or make calls under a pretext. A nondescript name, like “Business Office”, is usually used for this line.
- Lie Detector – There are lie detector software that claim to do a live stress analysis on the voice of the speaker and tell you as to whether they are speaking the truth.
Apart from these nifty tips, you have the old barrage of tricks like Voice alteration and Call recording that are used to snoop around better.