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Your phone stores a lot of personal data. Let’s face it, your whole life depends on it. You use your phone every day, send emails and text messages, make calls, listen to voicemails, take and share videos and photos, use social media, and more.
How To Stop Spyware On My Iphone
But why would anyone spy on you? What do they care about the information on your phone? There are many reasons why someone would want to monitor smartphone activity.
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Your significant other (or former significant other) may wonder what you do when they’re not around. You can store important business related information on your device. If you have any money in your bank account or anything left on the credit line, someone will be more than happy to steal it.
So, someone is spying on your phone? Do they use cell phone spy software? How do you know when someone is watching you on your phone? What can you do about it if they are? That’s a good question, and that’s why I wrote this article.
Even if you protect your phone with a strong password, it is still possible to be hacked. Innocent Android apps are known to contain spyware, and if you jailbreak your iPhone, someone can install spyware on your device.
In this guide, I will tell you 10 ways to find out if someone is spying on your phone and what you can do to stop it.
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Fortunately, there are warning signs you can spot that will alert you to the possibility of spyware infecting your device and monitoring your activities.
While some symptoms are more difficult to spot than others, if you keep monitoring how your device is working regularly, you will be able to find out if something is wrong with your device.
Has your monthly data usage increased recently? Is your device suddenly using more data than usual, going into your monthly data allowance, but you haven’t changed your online habits? It may indicate that someone has installed spyware on your device.
Small spy tools will try to send as much information about your device to their bases (aka the bad guys) as possible. It can use a large amount of information.
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At the other end of the spectrum, some spy writers are good at it, and their hacking rules are more selective with the information they seek and bring home. This makes detection a bit difficult.
It all boils down to making sure you keep up with your monthly data and take care of any sudden usage openings you see.
While you can contact your wireless carrier to check how much data you’ve used, you can also check your device. This means you can quickly check your data usage without having to dig around your provider’s website or app for data usage information.
To check mobile data usage on your Android 10 device, do the following. (The process should be similar to other Android versions.):
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To check your phone data usage on an iPhone running iOS 16, do the following. (The procedure should be the same on other versions of iOS and on iPadOS running iPadOS.):
While you might expect your iPhone or Android phone screen to turn on when you receive an incoming call, message, or most types of notifications, your phone screen shouldn’t light up for no reason when it’s in standby mode.
If you see your device’s screen on, hear noises or unexpected sounds, and don’t see any new notifications on your screen, something might be up.
Has your phone restarted for no reason or without you manually restarting it? Someone may have gained access to your smartphone without permission.
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An unexpected reboot could indicate someone has remote administrative access and can reboot your device at will. It also means that they have all kinds of access to your device and the personal data stored on it.
It could also mean that the new app or operating system you recently downloaded has bugs in it. Check for new updates for your device’s OS or apps. See if you can copy the device to reboot using the app that is open when it happens.
On your Android device, you can install and run antivirus or malware protection software to scan your device. iOS users will find that there is no antivirus scanner, and on a sandboxed iOS operating system, there is a possibility of a bug in the app or in the OS causing the reboot.
In the age of analog cellular networks, background noise and instability are to be expected. However, today’s digital cellular networks typically provide a stable and mostly noise-free connection.
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So if you hear some strange noises in the background, or (worse) you hear voices that don’t belong to the person you are calling, there is a possibility that someone is monitoring or recording your conversation.
Have you ever received unexpected messages with strange characters in them or reported your friends or others receiving strange or annoying messages from your phone?
This could be a sign that you have installed spyware or malware on your smartphone. SMS worms spread themselves through the online world by sending text messages with links in them. If the victim clicks on the link, the worm can infect their phone.
On your Android device, you can install and run security software such as antivirus or anti-malware to scan your device. iOS users probably don’t need to worry about this type of worm, because Android devices are mostly targeted.
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Also, be careful when clicking on links in these text messages, as they may be used to trick you into phishing and/or commercial scams. This applies to Android and iOS device platforms.
If you notice that your device’s battery life starts to deteriorate quickly and suddenly, it may mean that your battery is old and needs to be replaced. Or, it could mean that your device is infected with spyware, and the extra load it puts on your cell phone drains the battery faster than usual.
Spyware monitors every activity on your device and sends information about that activity to malicious actors who hacked your device. Shorter battery life often goes hand-in-hand with increased data usage due to spyware activity.
Taking screenshots, copying and pasting text, recording your chat, and perhaps taking pictures or recording video can eat up battery life quite a bit. This is especially true when your phone is not supposed to be used.
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If you are not sure whether it is an old battery or real spyware, test this by testing another battery unit or checking your device’s battery on another device. Then, take care of the battery usage.
Sorry iPhone users, your device’s battery is non-removable. However, you can make an appointment with Bar Genius and they can check your battery. Users running iOS 14 and later can use the privacy feature that alerts you when an app on your device uses the camera or microphone.
If the app uses your iPhone’s camera, you’ll see an indicator light up at the top of your device’s screen, as shown here:
If the app is using the iPhone’s internal microphone, you’ll see a light icon at the top of the device’s screen, as shown here:
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While it’s nice to see one of these icons light up when an app is using the camera or microphone, seeing one light up when you’re not recording video or audio should be a warning sign that something might be going on.
It’s easy to check your device to see which apps currently have access to your device’s microphone or camera.
These instructions are for Android 10 versions. The steps will be similar to those specific to Android 10 or to any other Android version. Contact the manufacturer for more information.
While low battery temperature can be a sign of some technical problem, it can also indicate that unauthorized activities, such as spyware activities, are happening in the background.
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If you haven’t used your phone recently, and it’s been sitting on your desk, it shouldn’t be warm or hot to the touch. If it heats up, then the intelligence equipment can work behind the scenes, collect information and send it back to the headquarters of the evil drama.
Your phone, like your Mac or Windows PC, tries to shut down all processes before shutting itself down or during a restart.
And, like your computer, sometimes these steps can conflict and block or slow down the system. While this can happen to any device, you may notice that it happens more often than usual if your device is infected with spyware.
You can notice that your smartphone