“If you have something important to say at least say it on a land line——they have to get a regular court warrant to listen to that.”
Thank you for your post. Perhaps you know the answer to my question: if a person has a land line but it’s connected to the same modem (I think that’s what it’s called, not sure) as the internet connection (Xfinity), is the land line (cordless phone and old push buttone princess phone) secure or not?
Best,
SC
The telephone half of your home land line is as secure as a court warrant can make it. your computer modem, if it uses your land line, operates on the same phone wire but in a different frequency band so your high speed PC traffic goes thru a third party like a LAN, Google, etc. so that part can be seen by others. Your push button Princess is as secure as a home phone can be. Your home cordless signal is not powerful enough to get outside your house walls so it’s ok. But if you have a satellite phone you’re talking to the world. If you happen to live in a neighborhood that is fiber optic-connected your line conversations are also as safe as a search warrant but everything else involves a third party. It’s always that third party exposure that creates the weak link and the exposure. Remember that the phone company guys are not the problem-—they live in the same neighborhood and understand clearly the risk of double crossing a customer.
I would say possibly not. If your “land line” is going through a modem, it might be VOIP, which would not be secure.
If you have Comcast, Cox, TWC, Charter, UVERSE, etc. as your land line provider that is a VoIP (Voice over IP) service. It rides the same network as TV and internet traffic. It is not POTS, which is a copper pair from your house to the CO.
Not sure about the legal side and how they compare though.
Note to California people, you might be interested in my last paragraph which deals with another spy on us, our PG&E smart meters.
“Perhaps you know the answer to my question: if a person has a land line but it’s connected to the same modem (I think that’s what it’s called, not sure) as the internet connection (Xfinity), is the land line (cordless phone and old push button princess phone) secure or not?”
Your question is an excellent one. We had PacBell/AT&T and went to Comcast/Infinity when the AT&T service was so bad my wife and I couldn’t call each other on the two lines in our house.
My wife kept her Princess because it works during power failures.
This past week, we found out that for some of the phones and 2 lines in an into our house, Comcast had run some of the lines through an old AT&T box.
We are have a total outside repaint and the painter and contractor said we should remove the old AT&T box.
So they disconnected, and we lost the use of my wife’s princess and one of the two lines in the two line phone in our kitchen.
Someone had installed a metal plate inside the AT&T box with special screw heads to keep non AT&T people out of that box. That was done by ?? after we went to Comcast. Our painter had worked for Dish as a installer in the Midwest, and he said he had heard of plates like this and they were installed to prevent non providers from getting into the boxes.
The other interesting finding deals with the so called smart meters that PG&E installed. They installed a line from the smart meter to a coupler box they installed on our Comcast cable coming into the house. Now, we know how our smart meters communicate with PG&E. They use our Comcast line. I’m sure that any other phone provider for any Cali family, provides this service to PG&E at a cost, which we pay via our PG&E bill.