Abstract: Hardware or software is added to a local system that has incorporated therewith a modem that is normally connected to the switched telephone system to initiate surreptitious calls to report various data to a remote monitoring station. These reporting calls are made from the remote equipment to one or more monitoring sites. The call initiation is preferentially triggered at a carefully controlled semi-random rate, perhaps once a week. The exact time chosen is concealed from the operator of the system that is reporting to the monitoring site. The same modem, or modems, normally used by the local system being monitored is (are) also used for an outgoing data call to ensure that the telephone connection is always accessible to the monitoring apparatus. For voice mail systems which lack modems, DTMF (Touchtone) can be used to transfer data.