TER General Board
Re:Prepaid phone cards. Safe?
Boooiiiinnnnnggggggg!
Cheers!
but seriously...call up Sprint right now and tell them you do not want detailed billing.
I was a telecom exec for quite a few years and my organization was responsible for handling the incoming requests from LE for call details, so I have quite a bit of domain experience here.
If I was LE, I could indeed trace your calls either way... That is, given your cell phone number, I could trace forward and find out who you called, and given a destination number, I could trace calls back and see who called, even through a calling card.
BUT WAIT!!! Here's the problem for LE though, and it's a biggie. This is a labor-intensive, monsterous pain-in-the-ass endeavor that may be suitable for felony work but not misdemeanor work. Imagine the work of geting a subpoena to get your cell records... cross-matching the toll-free cals on that list to which calling card company your calls went through... subpoenaing that card company for all the dialing details behind each of these calls, then looking through that list of calls to see if any of them were made to a targeted provider or agency.
In other words, there's a technical "can be done" and a theoretical "can be done." If it's the NSA that wants your call details, they'll probably get them, but if it's local LE, the bar is too high to bother getting over.
I've been tempted to write a big post covering ALL of the major telecom security issues we face, including: cell phones, caller ID, bills, calling cards, and call recording... If people are really interested in this stuff, I would, let me know.
If you are a Sprint user, you can go on the website and look at your invoice info which details every call you make.
I'm hoping the invoice and call detail info is secure, accessible only by using the master password for the account, but ... it looks like any phone on the account can go in, enter their phone #, click on "I forgot the Password" and the master password is sent to them on their handset. Does the master password come back to any handset on the plan, or just the primary account owner's handset?
If it comes back to any handset that requests it, and the wife or SO is one of the users on the account, all she has to do is review your list of calls, plug the interesting ones into Goggle, up comes the provider's website, and you're busted.
-- Modified on 7/18/2004 3:19:30 PM
-- Modified on 7/18/2004 3:25:12 PM
-- Modified on 7/18/2004 3:27:14 PM
-- Modified on 7/18/2004 3:34:05 PM
-- Modified on 7/18/2004 4:57:43 PM
Boooiiiinnnnnggggggg!
Cheers!
but seriously...call up Sprint right now and tell them you do not want detailed billing.
I did that already. Detailed bills no longer come to the house. But they still exist on the website. That's the problem.
-- Modified on 7/18/2004 7:52:59 PM
The only number that would be displayed on your bill would be the toll free number for the calling card. Sure, it's a pain in the ass, but it could save your ass in the long run.
I take it you are meaning prepaid phone cards. That is what I use.
However does anyone know whether calls to a provider can be traced to a specific phone card? If so, could all the source and destinations phone numbers of calls made using that phone card be gotten by LE?
If the answers to both of these questions were affirmative, then the only way a phone card really is safe, is to use it at a pay phone. If the answer to the first question is no, then a phone card provides anonymity regardless where it is used.
I was a telecom exec for quite a few years and my organization was responsible for handling the incoming requests from LE for call details, so I have quite a bit of domain experience here.
If I was LE, I could indeed trace your calls either way... That is, given your cell phone number, I could trace forward and find out who you called, and given a destination number, I could trace calls back and see who called, even through a calling card.
BUT WAIT!!! Here's the problem for LE though, and it's a biggie. This is a labor-intensive, monsterous pain-in-the-ass endeavor that may be suitable for felony work but not misdemeanor work. Imagine the work of geting a subpoena to get your cell records... cross-matching the toll-free cals on that list to which calling card company your calls went through... subpoenaing that card company for all the dialing details behind each of these calls, then looking through that list of calls to see if any of them were made to a targeted provider or agency.
In other words, there's a technical "can be done" and a theoretical "can be done." If it's the NSA that wants your call details, they'll probably get them, but if it's local LE, the bar is too high to bother getting over.
I've been tempted to write a big post covering ALL of the major telecom security issues we face, including: cell phones, caller ID, bills, calling cards, and call recording... If people are really interested in this stuff, I would, let me know.
Please write it!
Is it safe to use a prepaid calling card, one that isn't run through a machine to activate it, and was paid for by cash, to call from phone booths?
Seems to me there wouldn't be much to trace as long as you used it at phones that couldn't be linked to the user, and all calls were made to parties that couldn't be linked to the user. (In other words don't use the card at home, work or relatives or friend's homes, and don't use it to call home, work, relatives or friends.)
Am I being phobic or just quite careful?
A lot of the guys who call me use their work phone. If they get lost and need directions they use a pay phone on the way. I would use your work phone. Then the call could have been made by anyone!
~Shayla
If you have any questions afterward, call customer service.
I wouldn't think anyone else could legally access this information without a court order, but the fact is, the record is always there.
IMO, though, for lack of privacy, email concerns me. The only solution is to encrypt, but encryption has an alpine learning curve, and only works if the other person has scaled the mountain too.
/Zin
That was my first thought when I read the intial post, but I think he's talking about a different problem.
The question isn't "can another random Sprint subscriber get into my account" but rather "can another person who is already on my existing account (wife, coworker, etc.) get the account password sent to their phone, and thus get access to my call details.
The first is a very traditional privacy issue, and I agree that a carrier cannot let that happen. The second is a business practice issue... When designing their on-line account access system, they may, or may not, have treated each phone on a multi-phone account as a peer to the account holder.
Get another prepaid phone.
It's not that easy....
I don't know Sprint, but the news is not good... I have several numbers on my account, so I thought I'd try this. I went to the T-Mobile site and created a new web login based NOT on my primary number, but using the number of one of my other cell phones, just like any cell phone on a multi-phone or "family" rate plan.
Once I got logged in, I was able to see the call details for all the phones on my account, not just the one I created the login for.
This may or may not be the same at Sprint, but if I understand your question correctly... I suspect that she could NOT get the password for your specific phone number... But that she can get a separate login for her phone number, and once she has that, can get access to all the call details on the account, your phone included.
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