Henry Has
In this digital age, we store a pretty big amount of our sensitive personal data on our smartphones. That’s why it seems to me that we should try to protect our phones from spying as much as possible. Although, everything that was created by a human can be destroyed or hacked by another human being we still can and should try to prevent it.
You might legitimately ask why on earth somebody would spy on my phone. There can be multiple reasons for that.
First of all, you might be spied by your competitors if you own a business. Perhaps you store crucial business information that they could use to overtake you and ruin your business. Also, if you are politician, you may be spied by your competitors, journalists or foreign country’s secret intelligence agency that are collecting data for blackmail or some investigation.
Even when you are a regular person your spouse, co-worker or anyone that somehow got access to your phone can install spyware on it just for fun or check your loyalty. Don’t forget that robbers could identify your location via your phone’s location services and rob your house when you are not home.
If you are concerned about your privacy and security, you should take good care of your phone. By having a regular person in mind we provide you with 8 signs that you might be spied on and 5 ways you can stop it or prevent it from happening at all.
8 Signs that You are Being Spied on Your Phone
Your Battery is Draining more Quickly than Usual
If someone is running spyware on your phone, it is not a secret that your phone will die quicker due to increased battery energy usage said myessaygeeks.
Unless you changed your phone use habits like started playing more mobile games or watch more YouTube videos, there is a chance that somebody is spying on you through your phone. Note that batteries naturally over-time lose their energy capacity. Thus, if the change wasn’t sudden and it occurred over a long period of time it might just be a battery losing its energy capacity.
Phone Takes Longer to Charge
You might have noticed that when you use your phone while charging it takes longer to fully charge it. If your phone started charging slower with the same phone charger that you always used, it might be the case that someone is running an intense monitoring app under the hood of your phone.
During your Phone Calls, you started hearing a strange noise or echoing
Sometimes people hear strange noises or echoing while they talk on the phone, you might have heard them too.
Although they can be just interruptions with the telecommunication network sometimes it might be that somebody unwanted is listening to your conversation. If you never had any problems with your calls and out of a sudden you started hearing echoing and strange noises, it is an indication that someone is listening to your phone conversations.
The autocorrect feature stopped working or started lagging
One way to tell if someone is spying on your cell phone is to look of how your autocorrect behaves.
Sometimes spyware such as keyloggers on your phone interacts with your autocorrect which makes it act in a strange way that you might not even be able to use it anymore.
If out of a sudden it started behaving in a manner it didn’t behave before, you might have a spy friend on your phone that is collecting your typed information.
Unusually High Mobile Data Usage
If you have approximately the same mobile data usage throughout months and one month was unusually high even though you used your phone the same way as in previous months. There might be a pretty high chance that you have a low-end virus on your phone.
Your data usage might have increased due to the need of the spyware on your phone to send collected data to the spyware’s owner. However, it is almost impossible to notice mobile data shift your spyware is one of the high-end ones. Then you will need to check for other indication for spying.
Smartphone Shows Activity Signs During Standby Mode
Your phone suddenly discharge over-night no matter that it was idle all night? You might have a problem with spyware running in the background of your phone.
Somebody might be spying on your phone during day and night and you should go to the application manager and check the apps that can be run in the background and delete the suspicious ones.
Phone Remains Hot while in Idle mode
If your phone is constantly warm or hot, no matter the temperature outside and how you use it. You might have intense applications running under the hood that is spying on your phone.
Granting that it is not a problem with your battery. If you haven’t had any problem with phone temperature before and this issue arose out of nowhere, you might like to check for spyware software on your phone.
Phone Became Suddenly Significantly Slower
Every phone becomes slower and lags more overtime. Nevertheless, if your phone unexpectedly slowed down and does not return to normal speed. One of the reasons might be that someone is reading your text messages from their phone using installed spying software on your phone.
So, unless you did any damage to your phone, you might be potentially being remotely spied through your phone.
Possible Ways to Prevent Spying and Block Spy Apps
Install anti-spyware application
One of the possible ways of blocking spy apps on your phone would be to download antivirus software to your phones such as AVAST, Kaspersky or any other one that has a good reputation.
Although, free versions of spyware software might not be enough if people that want to spy on you are professionals, but it will protect regular smartphone users without any problem. By installing anti-spyware you can detect current spyware on your phone and prevent future spying.
Delete applications that use a lot of memory and mobile data
Sometimes phones might start running slow due to some program using a big amount of your phone’s random access memory.
Thus, if you suspect that spyware might be running on your phone, you should check for suspicious applications that are using a lot of your memory and delete them. However, be careful and Google first if that application is not crucial to your phone OS.
The same thing goes with mobile data usage, if you don’t know the program that uses a lot of your mobile data, you will be better of deleting it.
Factory reset the phone
If any of the above ways doesn’t help you, the quickest and simplest way to get rid of spyware application on your phone would be to factory reset your smartphone.
Don’t forget that factory reset removes all of your information. Therefore, before factory resetting your phone you should back up all of your information to the cloud or anywhere else you can. I recommend, just to back up only the most necessary information like phone contact, pictures and maybe text messages, but don’t back up applications as you don’t know which application might be infected.
I hope you will never be spied on your phone. However, it is always better to be safe than sorry.
