This blogpost is unfortunately barely readable on a small screen, because of the fixed line widths.
He's faithfully captured the 1980s BBS vibe.
Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
11–20 of 169 posts
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#12...And you could use a code on Motorola startac models to listen to these channels very easily. One of my hobbies was to do that when I was waiting for my girlfriend in the car.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#13Cordless phones were more "fun" to scan since it was generally your neighbours you heard just because of the range of those things. Also baby monitors were (and probably still are) wide open. Literally a 24/7 mic broadcasting for anyone to listen to.
Pagers were also easy to listen to. You'd get short messages without context. A lot were office to doctor or dispatch to tradesperson.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#14Cordless phones were more "fun" to scan since it was generally your neighbours you heard just because of the range of those things. Also baby monitors were (and probably still are) wide open. Literally a 24/7 mic broadcasting for anyone to listen to. Pagers were also easy to listen to. You'd get short messages without context. A lot were office to doctor or dispatch to tradesperson.
As a person who also did this, I feel like it has encouraged my suspicion of communication privacy.
All it takes is listening to your married neighbor talking to their boyfriend/girlfriend to realize that someone could be doing it to you. The difference now is that it doesn't have to be within a 150 foot radius.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#15Cordless phones were more "fun" to scan since it was generally your neighbours you heard just because of the range of those things. Also baby monitors were (and probably still are) wide open. Literally a 24/7 mic broadcasting for anyone to listen to. Pagers were also easy to listen to. You'd get short messages without context. A lot were office to doctor or dispatch to tradesperson.
Some baby monitors are using "encryption". I don't know if they are actually using encryption or just privacy codes. Even if they are using encryption, I doubt it's very secure stuff (probably 8 bit or something).
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#16I had (and probably still have) a Radio Shack Pro-2006 scanner from the late 80's. Even pre-Internet, instructions on how to bypass the cellular band block were easily found on Fidonet and local BBSes, and all it involved was removing a single diode. https://www.wentztech.com/radio/Equipment/Pro2006/pro2006mod... It was really a golden time for snoop...er..listening to cellular phones because they were so enormously…
Stories please!
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#17*in the USA. Radio receivers and scanners sold outside the USA, even if they are made inside the USA, have no restrictions. US manufacturers usually label these radios as "export" versions. It reminds me of the early days of web browsers when "export" versions of Netscape and IE only supported a maximum of 56-bit encryption for SSL.
I would imagine SDRs with "export" software are easy to get and can tune in.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#18I had (and probably still have) a Radio Shack Pro-2006 scanner from the late 80's. Even pre-Internet, instructions on how to bypass the cellular band block were easily found on Fidonet and local BBSes, and all it involved was removing a single diode. https://www.wentztech.com/radio/Equipment/Pro2006/pro2006mod... It was really a golden time for snoop...er..listening to cellular phones because they were so enormously…
Stories please!
Lots of similar stuff in the book The Best of 2600
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#19Anyone have any recommendations on a "modern" digital trunking scanner? (handheld)
I have an old GRE PSR-500 which isn't terrible, but I'm looking to replace it as it has next to zero software support for programming it and doing it by hand is a real pain.
You'd think in this day and age someone would make a scanner with a companion app connected to Radio Reference for programming. Would be nice to have bluetooth audio too.
FWIW, GRE stopped making scanners in 2012, and later closed down and sold off their scanner business to Whistler. Supposedly Whister were going to release a new scanner, the TRX-100, but cancelled it. Seems like handheld scanner technology is still stuck in the '80s.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#20Cordless phones were more "fun" to scan since it was generally your neighbours you heard just because of the range of those things. Also baby monitors were (and probably still are) wide open. Literally a 24/7 mic broadcasting for anyone to listen to. Pagers were also easy to listen to. You'd get short messages without context. A lot were office to doctor or dispatch to tradesperson.
As a person who also did this, I feel like it has encouraged my suspicion of communication privacy. All it takes is listening to your married neighbor talking to their boyfriend/girlfriend to realize that someone could be doing it to you. The difference now is that it doesn't have to be within a 150 foot radius.
Now, not only does someone not need to be actively listening, they don't even need to save the audio. Just convert it to text, keep it indexed and whatever three letter agency is doing the tapping has an easily searchable record of your communications should they ever feel the need to look into you without you knowing.