Stu Bykofsky: Snoops can listen in on your cell phone chats
Every single day Every word you say Every game you play Every night you stay I'll be watching you - The Police, "Every Breath
Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I'll be watching you
- The Police, "Every Breath
You Take"
IT'S NOT the watching that is troubling Gloria, a retiree who asked that I not use her real name.
On her cell phone, someone's listening to her conversations - and it can happen to you.
How? With a device known by different names but often called Cell Spy Pro, advertised all over the Internet.
"Cell Spy will work on just about all mobile device operating systems: Blackberry RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile and more," reads one online ad.
It is promoted as a useful device to help you catch a cheating spouse, a son dealing drugs, a daughter dating a bum, a business partner not on the level, by giving you the ability to listen in on phone calls, extract SMS text messages, view incoming and outgoing messages. For prices ranging from $49.95 to $99.95, you can be your very own 007.
It's so widely and openly advertised, you'd think it's 100 percent legal.
Not so fast, advises Michael Levy, the federal prosecutor who led the e-mail eavesdropping case against Larry Mendte. "Intercepting someone else's phone conversation is a crime, a violation of the wiretap statute."
If it's illegal, how can it be so widely advertised?
A screwdriver is a tool, Levy explained, but if you hold it to someone's neck, it's an instrument of crime. It depends on the end user.
Gloria suspects that her eavesdropper is a family member she's not on good terms with, who is snooping to find out what Gloria plans to do with her money when she passes on. That's why she requested anonymity.
Gloria became suspicious when she happened to see a message on her Nokia phone's screen that said "CALL DIVERT SET." Normally, with the phone held to her ear, she wouldn't see the screen.
She called her service provider, AT&T, which said it didn't know what was going on.
Gloria switched to a new Pantech phone and saw a message: "Your phone is activated to be forwarded." She had not set her phone calls to be forwarded. The best AT&T could do was tell her she wouldn't be charged for call forwarding.
At the U.S. Attorney's Office, Levy said he would put Gloria in touch with the FBI, which investigates illegal wiretapping.
According to the Cell Spy Pro ads, it is a program you download into the victim's cell phone.
Once downloaded, it provides the downloader with a record of all the victim's incoming and outgoing calls. It doesn't enable anyone to intercept random conversations of people strolling by.
"You can't do it without contact to the secondary phone," said Charles Palmer, associate professor of new media at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology.
So the electronic eavesdropping can't be done without hands-on contact with the victim's cell phone?
For civilians, that's right, he said, "but if you worked for an organization with three letters as its title, I believe it is possible." Think FBI, CIA.
The final question: Does Cell Spy Pro actually work, or is it a scam, as some say?
Online opinion is divided.
After reading quite a bit, I conclude that the program may work with older phones, but not on most newer models.
Palmer says a colleague tested it out and found it was hard to make work and required fairly advanced technical skill, which might explain a low success rate.
In any event, Gloria now uses her land-line phone for calls she wants to be sure are private.
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: