cops from all over the world sometimes lurk and very occasionally post (usually the standard warning that “unlicensed parties are illegal and we will take action to stop them” but I doubt if they would go to the trouble of obtaining info in this manner.

If it was proven they posed as a raver to obtain a partyline, they could be challenged in Court that they acted as agents provocateurs by encouraging the unlicensed event, rather than warning the promoters.

your partyline number can be inadvertantly compromised even if you kept it off the internet.

Lets say you passed the number to a friend who gave it to someone they knew who was doing crime, they then got themselves nicked, and the CID decided to check their mobile phonebook as part of another investigation – how many people store partylines in their phones with obvious names?

if you have real concerns about messages you have received let me know, but a balance needs to be struck between security, paranoia and parties will always be risky.

even if someone did ring the line and say they were cops, how could you prove it? sadly people who claim to be ravers occasionally do this sort of thing for “jokes” 🙁

complicated sting operations are normally only used against medium-high level drug dealers and organised crime gangs, which are way easier for cops to infiltrate due to having a similar “macho” culture!

if the cops used all their surveillance capability they had to its full effect, parties would never get off the ground at all! 90% of the time parties are stopped because they have pissed off the locals either due to noise, traffic congestion or anti-social behaviour/crime/damage – not high-tech surveillance.