Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart happens. Join Josh and Chuck, the guys who
Speaker 1: bring you stuff you should know, as they take a
Speaker 1: trip around the world to help you get smarter in
Speaker 1: a topsy turv economy. Check out the all new super
Speaker 1: Stuff Guide to the Economy from house stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: available now exclusively on iTunes Hi. A Marshall brain with
Speaker 1: today's question, is it possible to detect if someone is
Speaker 1: illegally using my phone line? It is possible and relatively
Speaker 1: easy for someone else to tap into your landline phone,
Speaker 1: especially if you live in a dorm or an apartment building.
Speaker 1: If someone has access to the wire, they can connect
Speaker 1: a phone to it and use your line. It's pretty rare,
Speaker 1: though for one thing, the penalty for doing it is stiff.
Speaker 1: It's also relatively easy to detect, and in general, phone
Speaker 1: wires are not that easy to get to because they're
Speaker 1: hidden inside walls. However, it's not unheard of. There are
Speaker 1: two possibilities. The perpetrator can create a permanent splice into
Speaker 1: your wire, in which case you would be able to
Speaker 1: see if the splice is there by tracing the entire
Speaker 1: length of the wire, or the perpetrator can clip in
Speaker 1: intermittently at a junction box. This is what a telephone
Speaker 1: repair person does when testing your line. In that case,
Speaker 1: there's no physical evidence, it's fairly easy to catch someone
Speaker 1: doing this. One thing you can do is get a
Speaker 1: tape recorder for phone calls. The recorder is completely automatic
Speaker 1: and starts recording as soon as anyone picks up any extension,
Speaker 1: which would include an extension tapped into your line. It
Speaker 1: captures both sides of the conversation. You could listen to
Speaker 1: the tape and probably get a good idea of who
Speaker 1: is tapped in. Hooking into a phone line like this
Speaker 1: is as you would expect a federal offense. Once you
Speaker 1: have evidence that it's occurred, turning it over to the
Speaker 1: phone company or a police department for prosecution is the
Speaker 1: correct path to follow. One easy solution to this problem
Speaker 1: is to eliminate the landline and use a cell phone instead.