Method: Your cellphone as a gadget

On EBay and on the Internet in general, I notice people looking for infinity bugs and audio bugs, and they must pay astronomical sums for those items because, wow, those stores charge a lot. Not sure why people are going for these devices either.

The infinity bug (a phone device that allows you to call the phone without it ringing and use the speaker to hear everything in the room) is unquestionably cool, but I have yet to find a reasonably priced device that does what it says it will do.

The audio bugs, well, that's another story. First, I've heard that purchasing these might be illegal in the first place... but not sure if that's true. Second, why do all of them broadcast in the regular FM band? I mean, how hard is that to find? You don't even need a bug detector to find it, just use your regular FM radio. Not very smart, IMO - at least have it be off the FM band, right?

Your cell phone, however, likely has all of these capabilities. Try this experiment:

• Turn off all ringers and make sure vibrate is not on.
• Set Auto Answer to On (or even better, Speakerphone).
• Place the phone as your "bug" in the target area.
• When ready, call from any other phone with mute on. If you want to be slick about it, dial *67 beforehand to make the other phone anonymous.

You should notice that your phone works excellently in this regard. The speaker of these phones are excellent to get full room audio. They are also only somewhat larger than these expensive devices that are on the Net. Some nice extra bonus:

• If it is a digital cell phone, it is sending the audio at 1800MHz - outside the range of some frequency counters and bug detectors.
• The audio is essentially encrypted - you can't eavesdrop in on the transmission without really advanced equipment.
• It is a needle in the haystack - even if audio transmission was suspected, it is just one of thousands of cell transmissions occurring at that moment.
• It is with you at all time - the best device you've always wanted is right there with you and does not attract attention.

So, skip those other devices... just use what you have.