How to Use a Baby Monitor to Find Listening Devices

A baby monitor will detect a hidden listening device as long as they both use the same frequency.

Listening devices have become smaller, cheaper and easier to hide. They are now readily available both online and in electronic stores. To completely sweep your home or office for listening bugs, you'll need a radio frequency detector and other equipment. However, you can use a baby monitor to perform a limited sweep. A baby monitor will detect any listening device operating on the same frequency as the monitor. Most baby monitors use 49MHz, 900MHz, 1.9GHz or 2.4GHz. However, listening devices can broadcast your conversations from 3KHz to 12.5GHz and usually avoid using the frequencies commonly used by consumer devices.

1 Instructions

2 Turn off all wireless devices

Turn off all wireless devices in your home such as cordless telephones, wireless toys, computer networks, Bluetooth devices, radios and microwaves. These devices can also interfere with the baby monitor.

3 Walk slowly through your home or office

Walk slowly through your home or office carrying the baby monitor. If the monitor has more than one frequency, slowly cycle through all available frequencies.

4 Beeps or distortions

Listen for any beeps or distortions with a repeating pattern, which would indicate the presence of a listening device. The noise should get stronger as you get closer to the device emitting the signal.

Based in Chicago, Lisa Shumaker has been writing business articles since 1998. Her articles have appeared in the "Buffalo News" and on eHow. Shumaker holds a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Penn State University.

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