Trapcall: Defeat ID Blockage or Easiest Wiretap Ever?

(cross-posted at Localoaf)

Trapcall can unmask callers who have blocked caller ID.

From Wired’s Kevin Poulsen:

The service, called TrapCall, is offered by New Jersey’s TelTech systems, the company behind the controversial SpoofCard Caller ID spoofing service. The new service is likely to be even more controversial — and popular.

“What’s really interesting is that they’ve totally taken the privacy out of Caller ID,” says former hacker Kevin Mitnick, who alpha-tested the service.

TrapCall’s basic unmasking service is free, and includes the option of blacklisting unwanted callers by phone number. It also allows you to listen to your voicemail over the web. It’s currently available to AT&T and T-Mobile subscribers, with support for the other major carriers due within weeks, says TelTech president Meir Cohen.

It works pretty well, I must say. I signed up with the service that then left a voicemail for me with a PIN number. I used that to confirm I have the cell phone on their web site. Then I dialed a cryptic authorization number that trapcall used to reprogram my phone to redirect blocked calls which I send to voicemail. This sends them through trapcall’s system and then the call gets forwarded back to me with the blockage removed.

I tested this by dialing from a friends phone blocking caller ID with the “*67” block and it worked well: the call came through as blocked, I pressed the iphone power button twice (to normally redirect to voicemail) and the call came back seconds later as from my friends phone. And the indication on the other line is noticable, but not by much.

The best part about their basic service is that it’s free. The paid options include voicemail transcriptions (where you obviously consent to have humans listen to your messages) as well as call recording. I wonder a bit about the last capability… it would seem that I could steal someone’s phone, program it with a beartrap account (the more expensive trapcall account) and have access to call recordings from that phone. It’s not clear to me that there is any necessary indication to the user of the cellphone that all of this is happening.