How to Tell if Someone is Bugging You

Most people would declare, "Go ahead and eavesdrop. I have nothing to hide."

Saying that is understandable, but that does not make it true.

Everyone has something worth being kept secret. Think about your own situation. You have a social security number, credit card information, a bank account, a driver license, an unlisted telephone number, computer usernames and passcodes, names and addresses of friends and family, E-mail addresses, and on and on.

See, you do have a whole lot to hide – and you should.

How can you tell when someone is bugging you; that is, actively eavesdropping on you to try to get at your secrets? There are warning signs that you can recognize when someone is bugging you. These have been listed for us all by the "Granite Island Group," a company that specializes in countering spying by the use of technical surveillance counter measures. (www.tscm.com) .

Some indications that you may be bugged

All of a sudden, people seem to know your confidential information, the things you thought were safe, secure, and very secret. Whenever your competitors show that they know your private matters, or when you smell that people who should not know those things do know them, or when you read an article about yourself in the newspaper or hear your secrets being talked about on the radio – but you never told anyone or gave an interview – it is time for you to suspect that you have been bugged.

Business spying is big business. You are about to bid on a profitable job. It is important for you and your staff to really consider the deal in all of its aspects. So you have meetings of those planners who need to know what is going on and what your project bid positions (pricing and the like) are going to be. The next thing you know, the company down the street enters a project bid that duplicates your own, right to the letter – except for one thing. They offer a better price.

People who should not know about your many activities do know about them.

Voices on your telephone sound funny or change voice volume during a conversation. A really professional eavesdropper would not let that happen, but it could be that you are being bugged by an amateur, and there are plenty of amateur eavesdroppers around. It is time to get your telephone instruments and phone lines checked.

Another possible indicator similar to phone volume changes is "extra" noise in your ear. Scratching, popping, and static sounds qualify here to make you hustle to have your phone setup checked.

If your eavesdropper has been able to access your telephone equipment so as to install what is known as a "hook switch bypass" on the telephone handset, that telephone is now turned into a microphone and also a speaker that are constantly "on." If your phone handset is hung up and you hear sounds coming from it, you can assume that someone is listening to all that is going on within up to twenty feet or so.

If your phone rings a lot, but nobody is there. Maybe there is a faint tone, or you may hear a momentary, high-pitched squeal or beep, there may have been a "slave device" or phone line extender installed on your telephone line. But, don’t panic if it is only an incoming fax machine or modem trying to get through to you, or perhaps by dialing your number by mistake.

You can be an amateur counter-spy yourself by using your AM/FM radio to check for spying gadgetry in your surroundings. The method of use here is somewhat complicated, and so reference is made to the "tscm" Web site (above) for a good description. You move around your area with the radio, and if you hear the radio squealing, you probably have a problem.

Even car radios are not exempt from bugging use. If the radio in your car gets "weird" it may be that it is being exploited by an eavesdropper.

As with the car radio and the AM/FM radio you use for a squeal test, when your TV comes up with funny interferences, it is time to get serious about finding out why. Is it eavesdropping or is it an ailing TV?

Someone burgled your house or place of business – but stole nothing. You can tell that someone was in there. Maybe they left a live bug behind.

Hey, that electrical wall plate was not at that strange angle before today!

Someone you don’t know all that well just gave you a very nice writing pen or electronic gadget as a gift. Maybe you do know them as one of your vendors or someone you recognize as a friend of one of your competitors. Could be also, your soon-to-be ex-wife’s brother! One never knows.

All of a sudden a little hole (around dime-sized) shows up in the ceiling or the wall. It could be that someone has placed a camera or a microphone behind the hole because they heard that you were good-looking or had a fine singing voice, right?

Where did that bump in the vinyl baseboard come from? How about some wiring or maybe a little microphone? You don’t have any metal cockroaches, do you?

If you were to hide an eavesdropping gadget, where would you be likely to conceal it? How about that now-crookedly placed smoke detector, electric clock, exit sign, or framed picture. There may also be a small hole on its surface as well as indications that someone moved it a bit.

How did that get here? The that could be almost anything, like a radio, a clock, a new exit sign that you never ordered – almost anything unexpected and not there earlier.

If you see some white powder on the floor or on some furniture, look around and above the powder to see if someone may have drilled a small hole in the wallboard – or if someone didn’t know how to get sugar into their coffee.

If you spot the telephone company or TV cable people seeming to hang out in your vicinity way more than they probably should, it is time to check things out carefully.

Service and delivery trucks are often used as "listening posts." Be watchful if you see them parked close by with no one seeming to be in them.

Service people show up at your place, but no one called them.

Who moved the furniture?

The sign of a recently "picked" lock is that it doesn’t "feel right" any more.

After you open the envelope that just arrived in the mail, out comes a transcript of what you thought were your own private conversations. The sender is trying to mess with your mind. You can almost anticipate this sort of thing when there are problems with a marriage, custody fights, and the like.

Well, there you have a bunch of indicators that should cause you to find out the why, the where, the when, the who, and the cure for what just may be someone bugging you. You have secrets. It pays to know when other people are trying to get at them.

Some may remember that cautionary expression that was seen and heard very often in the days of World War II - "Loose lips sink ships." It was a good thing that spies and the like did not have the tiny electronic bugging devices that are readily available today for use against YOU.

Here is a "fun" blog post about another kind of "bugging"

This is on the blog post, "Stop Bugging Me,"an entry on The Daily Redneck blog. It is about some West Coast Redneck who hired a company to help him get rid of some hairy bugs that he was certain were somewhere in his kitchen. He couldn't find the things, so he hired it done for him.