how does my "neighbor" hear my private telephone conversations.

This is completely strange, and very long. I’ve exhausted all my ideas, and need fresh ones.

Some background.

  1. my neighbor is old, very very old. Also, they are not very mobile. So something like creeping up to the window and listening in is out of the question. Although, a very long time ago (decades) they did used to hang out near an air condition vent, listening to our in person conversations.
  2. when I say neighbor, I mean they live in a small house connected by a breezeway to my house. I do admit they are rather close. Yes I do have access to thier house.
  3. i have no real idea of thier level of technological expertise. They are pretty manipulative so even though I’m under the impression they’re very limited on expertise, it’s possible they know more than they let on. Let’s just say at this point, they say they have difficulties placing calls to thier saved contacts on thier jitterbug flip phone, but when your not looking they’re already on the line with someone, like five seconds after you walked out the door. As far as we know they do not have access to the internet, but who knows. They do know how to navigate to at least a limited number of websites though. (Slight fear of them seeing this post, haha)
  4. they digest far right media. This in itself doesnt seem relavent, but I suppose, in my head, this might be able to give them awareness of the types of technology that one might use to pull something like this off.
  5. It is remotely possible that someone could have installed something inside the house maybe about 15-20 years ago, and given the neighbor access to it.
  6. they are on a limited income, and are not independently wealthy. Any technology would have to be no only easy to use, but on the less expensive side as well.

So… Maybe about once a year for the past few years a topic or phrase that was talked about over the phone would come up in conversation the next day. Not a big deal, written off as coincidence. That’s just how it goes sometimes. Well now, we’ve had a falling out. For the past few weeks they have brought up many private conversations I have had over my cell phone with at least 2 different people. They repeat not just what I say, but what the person on the other end of the phone says as well. I say, “Man, im pretty sure they’re hearing my phone calls.” The other person says, “Maybe there’s a bug somewhere.” The next day they start to prattle on about…a bug on the wall. But not a real bug…oh what do you call those things…you know, bugs that know things. Or I say “I’m worried about this escalating.” The other person jokingly says “Oh, don’t eat or drink anything from them, unless they take some first… They may try to kill you.” The next day neighbor is handing me a concoction they’ve made. “Oh, I’ve just sat down with this mixture I’ve created for my health. Everything I put in it is sitting on the counter there. (Cue various herbal supplements / tinctures) here have the first sip… it’s not going to kill you.” They are bringing up / creating situations centered around private converstaions from the night before. They may skip a day or two here and there, but it’s a pretty regular occurrence.

Something worth mentioning, is that while im on the phone call, I will turn on my Bluetooth and use my earbuds. Everytime the buds connect, the call drops, and we have to call each other back. I figured I was pushing a button wrong or something and hanging up. But since the neighbor has gone somewhere, we have not been able to replicate the situation.

Things we have tried but have since been disproven:

  • At first we thought we were leaving windows open and they could just hear it…but all windows were closed.
  • maybe they can hear through the walls somehow, they are thin. But its never been a thing before. (why would they have to hang out by aforementioned vent, then) We blast the radio real loud and see how much we can hear from neighbors porch. Can’t make out exact words and doesn’t explain hearing the other person.
  • well thier radio automatically connects to iPhones ( un-updated iphone from the air drop debacle/ f-ed up feature of the radio involving nfc and bluetooth) and it did pair with my phone at some point. Maybe they can the other person over thier radio. But we tried to make it work and just cant replicate it.
  • we’ve checked obvious places for a walke talkie looking receiver. Nothing.
  • we’ve used one of those cheap bug detectors off Amazon and checked the house…and the vent. No wires comming out of strange places as far as we can tell.

I’m at my wits end. What could they be using and how can I stop it? It maybe all a coincidence, but then its as much so as Facebook / Google targeted ads that arent listening your conversations. I mean, what, are they an advanced algorithm that can guess what your thinking based on all available data on you?

Help! And thank you for taking the time. Also, sorry about the format / spelling getting all this out on mobile is tough.

TL:DR. My really old neighbor seems to hear my both sides of cell calls to at least 2 different people. Is there simple, rather cheap technology put there that they could be using. And how do i go about finding it / making it stop.

human_no_4815162342,

Go by elimination, the first thing I would do is reset the phone and don’t pair it to any bluetooth device. Also change the WiFi password and the router admin password with strong randomly generated passwords.

Then keep going as usual and see if something changes.

When you said you used a bug detector, was it a radio frequency analizer? Did you check while doing a phone call, a bug that is not transmitting wouldn’t be detected.

Do the people you talk with or someone living with them know your neighbour? Maybe the leak is on the other end.

If the houses share an air conditioning system maybe try closing off the vents.

I know you are sure of your experiences but have you checked your physical and mental health? A few mental conditions could make coincidences turn into paranoia, but even a few simple physical conditions like carbon monoxide poisoning and maybe even vitamin deficiency could loosen your grip on reality . Has someone else witnessed first hand these events?

FarFarAway,

So, it’s the neighbors mental condition that’s taken the dive. They left to get help. It is indeed possible some of thier crazy rubbed off on me, but it really is eerie. They did actually state a couple times that theyve heard us talking or laughing or whatever. We blew it off at first cause…yeah, ok. you HEARD us…the second time they said it, we already had our suspicions.

At this point we eliminated what we thought the cause was (that damn radio) since there wasnt anything new for the few days until they left. I’m not opposed to the idea that maybe the last one was actually a coincidence, (which would be a relief) we can’t really test out any theories until they get back home, we were just hoping to get rid of the culprit before hand, so as not to cause any further distress.

The detector we used was a rf/gps/infrared scanner. We did not use it during a call, only after. I figured something like that was always transmitting, but why would it be if it wasnt actively being used. This is helpful. Thank you.

The vents are not actually connected. The vent leads to an area outside that is easily accessible by people, and is mostly out of sight unless you go out of your way. But we’ve been looking at that area since it was a problem before.

The other people I talk to are my support system. One has limited contact with the neighbor and the other really has next to no contact at all, so im positive they’re not leaking any information to them. The person with limited contact has also been witness to this. They live away from the property.

Thank you for the ideas, I learned something new today.

FarFarAway,

So, it’s the neighbors mental condition that’s taken the dive. They left to get help. It is indeed possible some of thier crazy rubbed off on me, but it really is eerie. They did actually state a couple times that theyve heard us talking or laughing or whatever. We blew it off at first cause…yeah, ok. you HEARD us…the second time they said it, we already had our suspicions.

At this point we eliminated what we thought the cause was (that damn radio) since there wasnt anything new for the few days until they left. I’m not opposed to the idea that maybe the last one was actually a coincidence, (which would be a relief) we can’t really test out any theories until they get back home, we were just hoping to get rid of the culprit before hand, so as not to cause any further distress.

The detector we used was a rf/gps/infrared scanner. We did not use it during a call, only after. I figured something like that was always transmitting, but why would it be if it wasnt actively being used. This is helpful. Thank you.

The vents are not actually connected. The vent leads to an area outside that is easily accessible by people, and is mostly out of sight unless you go out of your way. But we’ve been looking at that area since it was a problem before.

The other people I talk to are my support system. One has limited contact with the neighbor and the other really has next to no contact at all, so im positive they’re not leaking any information to them. The person with limited contact has also been witness to this. They live away from the property.

Thank you for the ideas, I learned something new today.

Aviandelight,
Aviandelight avatar

Does your neighbor use a hearing aid? It wouldn't surprise me. These devices can connect to Bluetooth. I would take the advice already posted about resetting the Bluetooth connections to your phone.

NotABearJustAHuman,
NotABearJustAHuman avatar

I too was about to suggest the neighbor has Bluetooth hearing aids. A family member has Bluetooth hearing aids and you can never tell they have them.

DrChickenbeer,
DrChickenbeer avatar

@Aviandelight

I immediately thought of a hearing aid too. I'm not sure of what tech they use these days but RF interference can do weird things.

@FarFarAway

bonoisatwat,

I really don’t mean to be a grammar Nazi, but the amount of times you misspelled “their” is crazy. Check to make sure your auto-correct is good. There’s no way it should have allowed “thier”.

bonoisatwat,

Here we go again, Reddit habits die hard I guess. Suggesting to someone that their auto-correct is messing up becomes a cause for downvotes.

What if that was on their resume and they didn’t catch it?

You guys have nothing but hate in your hearts.

MsPenguinette,

Enlish is already fucked up. I think we should just vote for “there” to be the unified spelling and have it be up to the reader to interpret. Cause at this point, it’s just pendants who bring it up while I feel like everyone else is able to understand what is meant. Homonynes are wierd, we understand people speaking them perfectly fine

MsPenguinette,

Enlish is already fucked up. I think we should just vote for “there” to be the unified spelling and have it be up to the reader to interpret

Milkshakinit,

Lol, right?! There's literally a dedicated word for that (synonym) and endless examples that make a definition of it redundant haha.

DpwnShift,
DpwnShift avatar

The only "reddit" thing here is whining about downvotes. Everything else you've said has been fine and seems like it was well-received...

But I'm not in-charge here, so what you want!

subignition,
subignition avatar

At the time of posting, your comment is voted 18 to 1 in favor.

You got one downvote and reacted this way?

Respectfully... take a deep breath and a step back. You're going to be fine.

vaguerant,
vaguerant avatar

The user is from lemmy.world and their comment currently has a score of -11 when viewed from their home instance. Downvotes don't federate, so you're only seeing the downvotes received from kbin users.

Lifebandit666,

I don’t know, some autocorrect just suggest the most used word for that set of screen taps. When you tell the autocorrect to remember a word by selecting it, it then just becomes another word to the autocorrect, and the more you select that spelling, the more it’s suggested.

So what I’m saying is that OP has trained their, sorry thier, autocorrect wrong.

Just for that silly sentence above I’ve just had to delete the misspelling and the capitalised version of it from my own dictionary, and had to skip over 3 American misspellings just to write this sentence because I’m British.

FarFarAway,

Yeah, I know…

I before e except after c…

It’s definitely a chronic problem I have. Since I changed phones a while back, it gives me suggestions but I have to manually select them. Typically, it underlines the misspelled words but in these apps, it just doesnt.

And as many times as i spelled “thier” here, it all just went to shit.

I will double check my settings.

Sorry about that. :\

gorillakitty,

The way I remember it is that the first part of “their” is “the”.

You can also remember it because “they” starts with “the”.

I don’t know if that’ll help but I hope so!

iAmTheTot,
iAmTheTot avatar

I before e except after c…

FYI that's an awful "rule" and as far as I know isn't taught anymore because, again, it's terrible. There's more exceptions to it than follow it. Such as "their".

I've seen an expanded version that includes "or when sounding like 'a' like in 'neighbour' and 'weigh'," but that's still far from perfect. For example, leisure doesn't fit either of those. Deceive has it come after a c, doesn't sound like an 'a', and the i still comes after the e. Forfeit is another, and of all the words I've used so far, it produces yet a new sound with the same vowel conbo.

English is just a really whacky language because of its history and influences.

DpwnShift,
DpwnShift avatar

There's more exceptions to it than follow it.

Well, that's definitely not true. It is an unreliable "rule" though...

iAmTheTot,
iAmTheTot avatar
TDCN,
@TDCN@feddit.dk avatar

On modern smart phones ther are some accessibility settings for hearing aid connection that iirc connects automatically to hearing aids that support the feature. It's not always using Bluetooth. The non Bluetooth variants are pretty low range I think but Bluetooth is also used for the same features. Go to you phone settings and see if you accidentally enabled something like "hearing enhance" "hearing aid enhance" etc.

iByteABit,

Like others have said I think you should seriously consider checking your mental health with a psychiatrist.

I’m sorry if it’s not the case, but you shouldn’t risk it if it is, I’ve seen cases like this and it’s really sad to witness. It only goes downhill from there if left untreated…

jerrimu,

They may have some srt of hearing aid. Also, nothing you posted proves they heard your call, it could simply be coincidence.

number6,

Possibly they have a directional microphone. This may seem like high-tech, but it’s been around forever, predating cellphones. So someone could have bought it from Radio Shack and learned to use it when they were younger. So if you’re talking loudly, and they have a microphone, they can pick it up. Any idea of their former career?

I don’t buy the CO idea. CO is more likely to cause headaches, nausea, and skin flushing. And everyone in the house would be showing symptoms too.

SHITPOSTING_ACCOUNT,

My guesses, in this order:

  1. Confirmation bias
  2. Carbon monoxide or mental health issues on your side (I'm being serious, don't rule it out).
  3. Some low tech way (you're speaking very loudly, you somehow managed to broadcast to their Bluetooth speaker)

With a strong likelihood of it being 1, slightly less 2, unlikely 3 or anything else.

dis_honestfamiliar,

I’m gonna go with #2 very high likely chance. Also, they didn’t mentione what they think that, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the other person tells your neighbor about the conversations. Meaning you think your conversations are one to one, but maybe the other party shares with your neighbor.

PerspectiveVortex,

I’m certainly no expert, and maybe there’s a reason no one else has suggested this, but I think we need to consider if this is a paranoid delusion. Maybe speak to a doctor?

PerspectiveVortex,

I’m certainly no expert, and maybe there’s a reason no one else has suggested this, but I think we need to consider if this is a paranoid delusion. Maybe speak to a doctor?

abcd,

How about talking about some major crimes until the police gets involved. In this case your neighbor himself may call the cops and tell them he is listening to your calls…

marsta,

What about regular conversations when you are having people over? If it’s not tech/bluetooth related they must be able to hear that too and it must seem to them like a phone call (just 2 people talking)

MrBlueSkies,

It could much simpler than all the Bluetooth answers here. Do you just talk really loudly on the phone? I can only hear my neighbour when she’s talking on the phone, but not directly to her husband.

pubtup,

I've heard this story so many times from people abusing stimulants, meth in particular. I've lost friends and family to it. Every single time it was the result of meth use. Sorry if this is not the case but it's never not been meth in my experience.

mockingbird,

I don’t have any more helpful advice besides what the others said but I am very interested in hearing how this goes. I hope you can get some peace of mind!

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
  • tacticalgear
  • thenastyranch
  • ethstaker
  • everett
  • Durango
  • rosin
  • InstantRegret
  • DreamBathrooms
  • magazineikmin
  • Youngstown
  • mdbf
  • slotface
  • GTA5RPClips
  • kavyap
  • JUstTest
  • tester
  • cubers
  • cisconetworking
  • ngwrru68w68
  • khanakhh
  • normalnudes
  • provamag3
  • Leos
  • modclub
  • osvaldo12
  • megavids
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines