Looking to buy a home phone system but want to make sure it is secure and safe, however, think anyone can tap in with the right equipment.
Also, when it comes to cell phones, what can be used that nobody can listen in on them?  Understood it to be digital and phone cards, but just found out those can be tapped into, also.
To make large biz deals, I need to have some safety here.
Anyone know anything about phones sytems?  Any techies or geeks out there?  Gracias!

The way someone like LE would tap into your phone line would be to attach equipment outside your house.  They'd go to the phone company and plug into the other side of your phone line, land line or cellular line.
So there really isn't anything you can do to stop LE from tapping the phone besides hoping they don't know your phone #.

Amateurs would probably also tap your land-line phone outside your house by attaching equipment to the wire that runs from the telephone pole to your home, so there isn't much you can do there either to protect a land-line.

A digital cellular phone would be fairly hard for an amateur to tap, since they would not have access to the phone company's equipment and the signal between your phone and the tower is encrypted.  Not impossible given enough time and equipment, but not easy.

Encrypted... not true. Scrambled... closer to the truth. Spread spectrum is the dividing of the digital signal across multiple radio frequencies. Because only a portion of the digital conversation is on any given channel, it's "scrambled". However, 100% of everything necessary to pick up any phone call is right inside that $20 handset in your fist. No exotic equipment is REQUIRED. Exotic equipment makes the task FAR easier, because you don't have to crack open the plastic covers. 8-)

Foo is right that an amateur, virtually by definition, wouldn't find it an easy job. But for less than one bbbjtc you can get all the "exotic" equipment you need.

Far more important to this discussion is that you should live with the knowledge that your digital cell conversation is not private. I guess in this forum, mentioning that it's illegal is mostly comic relief. 8-)

he will replace the darn thing.