If you've ever wished you could flip a switch and end someone's annoying phone call, it turns out you can.
But there may be a high price to pay.
As CBS2's Mary Calvi reports, a controversial technology could silence your phone.
"There was a lot of noise, constant talking, people telling each other what they were having for dinner, what they were going to do at the weekend, and it was tiring," said one commuter.
The man decided to withdraw, and what he did was illegal, which is why he asked to conceal his identity.
"If you could keep a little bit, you'd ask them well, and they wouldn't, so we cut them off," he said.
He's not kidding. With a phone jammer, a device that interrupts phone signals, a person can actually cut off annoying calls from others.
He said he wasn't worried about getting caught, but maybe he should be. The Federal Communications Commission has stiff penalties for people who find blocked cell phones and GPS devices.
While jammers are illegal in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and many other countries,signal jammers are available for sale on the web and their use has been demonstrated on YouTube.
Criminologist Joseph Giacalone explains why these devices are so dangerous.
"They can interrupt 911 calls, they can interrupt police radios, bus radios," he explained.
Jammers are more effective than annoying people on the phone, and even a simple call to the doctor's office can be interrupted.
But there is no shortage of consumers interested in buying them.
"For example, many employers are calling to find cell phone jammer so their employees aren't on the phone all the time," explains Yatri Trivedi of spytecinc.com.
Some devices can shorten a phone to a shorter range of 15 feet or so, while others can destroy entire cell towers, and apparently a lot of people are using them.
"I'm not going to pay $400 a month just to hear people yelling on the phone for 20 minutes straight," the anonymous commuter explained.
