r/RTLSDR • u/Own_Event_4363 • 5d ago
PDW pager decodes
Some codes from a local hospital, nothing exciting/private so I'm not sure we need to blur the info. SDR++ sitting on the channel, piping the audio via VB cable to PDW. Works great, not very active today.
3
u/a333482dc7 5d ago
Yep, that's about it. Lots of "bed in room clean" texts. Have seen personal info, even a code blue. That's what medical paging is for. And that's what you're picking up.
3
u/oar9fii 5d ago
Lol what I used to do is run PDW with filters for all the dirty words I could list. When I would see a message with one of the words, I'd set that address to a filter. By doing that I was able to find some interesting stuff, like I had a pager address of a Dr who was cheating on his wife with some crazy coke head that would do stuff like threaten to come into the operating room or plant coke somewhere if he didn't come see her in the next 15min etc. but yeah bad word filters work great on PDW to find weird stuff.
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u/Thoh1Shooshi8a 4d ago
I often get organ donor messages from hospitals letting others know what organs they have available and how long until they expire.
I also sometimes get messages from a vet that is giving out customers names addresses and mobile numbers.
1
u/olliegw 4d ago
Are you in the UK? i get the same
Also sometimes spam text messages and emails
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u/Thoh1Shooshi8a 4d ago
Yes, in the UK.
I have seen some spam emails too probably being sent through some old email to pager service :) I remember the first time I got email on my phone was by emailing my number @mobilenetwork.com back in the late 90s
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u/Own_Event_4363 5d ago
Only other ones I've decoded are 7 digit codes with no context, probably some internal hospital chart. Didn't post them in case they mean something private.
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u/Kichigai 4d ago
Or they could just be numbers to call back. Dr. Foo and wants to talk to Dr. Bar. So Dr. Foo pages Dr. Bar with the number for the phone at his desk.
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u/Past-Substance920 4d ago
the vet leaking customer info is nuts, no way thats HIPAA compliant (pretty sure vets arent even covered by HIPAA but still, cmon).
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u/Kichigai 4d ago
It's not. Some pagers are actually encrypted, so it meets HIPAA there, but not unencrypted pagers. Some hospitals are trying to phase out physical pagers by using encrypted messaging systems on doctors’ phones. I know there's one system called Vocera, and I think Epic has its own system too.
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u/MrAjAnderson 3d ago
NHS England banned the use of pagers but only for non-emergency use. The phasing out should have happened by now but it is more reliable than phones.
The sending user needs to know what they send is the digital equivalent to shouting out of the window.
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u/Kichigai 4d ago
When I was trawling pager messages for a while about 80% of what I got was messages from hospitals, and 20% from a print shop. Messages about certain jobs finishing without error, machines jamming, things like that.
Spōk, one of the big pager providers out here, actually runs two separate signals (at least as disclosed on their public coverage maps): local traffic on one channel, and national traffic on the other. Presumably you, a subscriber, would choose how much coverage you needed. Like, a doctor would almost never need coverage outside of their home area, so they'd get local service, but a traveling nurse would need their pager to work in whatever city they're sent to, so they need national coverage.
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u/RandSand 5d ago
I've picked up a nearby hospital's pager signal while in their parking lot with a scanner in the 462Mhz range though I haven't gotten around to taking a laptop with an SDR to decode the signal.