A New York psychiatrist, Joe Gold, said that one of the greatest and most widespread fears of the 21st century man is to be constantly spied on;To this fixation, because in most cases it is of this that it is, the name of "Truman syndrome" is attributed (from the film The Truman Show).
Yet, at times, suspecting being supervised does not mean being paranoid because, if you notice something unusual on your mobile phone, you could really be a victim of a hacker who tries to steal your personal information or an excessively jealous partner who wants to control yoursmovements.
To reassure you, we can tell you immediately that, if it is true that there are several ways to invade your telephone privacy, it is also true that there are many tricks to understand if your phone is under control.Knowing these tricks, will help you defend you from those who, for one reason or another, try to violate your right to confidentiality.
We therefore advise you to continue reading this article because we will talk to you not only about the methods to find out if your phone is controlled, but also of those signals that could make you suspect that it is.
Index
How can you spy on a mobile phone?
First of all, let's try to understand how a mobile phone can be spy on.
You must know that there are programs (called spy software or spyware) which, once installed on your phone, allow you to trace you in a rather meticulous way: through the simple sending of a message, they can warn those who spy on you if you are engaged in a conversationand allow him to listen to it;They also manage to send a copy of all the SMS you receive and access your WhatsApp, Skype, Messenger or Facebook;They allow audio-environmental listening, to geolocate you and also to activate your mobile phone camera.
We therefore talk about software even quite sophisticated that can be purchased for absolutely affordable figures.
At this point, you will probably be wondering how this spyware could end up on your mobile phone.The answer is very simple.It may have been installed indirectly: maybe, you have unloaded, absently, an un verageted application, therefore not safe, which "contained" it and, once on your phone, it started sending useful information to the Hacker to blackmailTo access your online accounts.
Obviously, there is also the possibility, decidedly more disturbing, that someone has installed it in person: in fact there are programs that, to work, require physical access to the phone.In this case, it is very likely that you do not face an attacker interested in spying on any person, but someone who intends to control you in particular.
In addition to spy software, there are also hardware spies, that is, physically modified phones to allow you to control the communications of other people or to trace their travels.
Mobile phone under control: what are the suspicious signals?
Below, we want to list a series of signals that could indicate that they have the phone under control.Obviously, we are in the field of hypotheses for which we advise you, if you were to notice them, not to jump immediately to hasty conclusions.
If you notice, for example, of interference or background noises during your phone calls these could be due to whether simple network problems or in harmless electromagnetic interference, but also report the presence of a bug.
A slow cell phone, which restarts independently or which lights up without reason;A battery that lasts less than usual or that easily overheat as well as an anomalous credit consumption, are situations that deserve to be investigated.
Paying attention to these signals is certainly a good rule but then, before formulating any type of conjecture, we invite you to check the status of the battery of your phone and to make sure that all the updates of your smartphone have been made.
The first rule to protect your privacy is to adopt prudent behavior: we therefore advise against lending your mobile phone lightly (but in general all electronic devices), as an attacker could easily install a spyware.
Another advice is to always keep the traffic generated by your smartphone under control and to try to use sites and apps with HTTPS protocol.
The installation of an antimalware could also useful capable of blocking the installation of cell software on the mobile phone.
An excellent help also comes from different applications: just to give you an example, you may find a program as a program as a device analyzer that allows you to identify any vulnerabilities present in your system and set the phone configurations so as not to allow hacking attempts.
Finally, we advise you to use safe passwords: we remind you that 0000 and 1234 are not among these.
How to understand if your smartphone is controlled?
If you have founded suspicions to believe that your phone is spied on, surely it will be necessary to come to head of the situation.What to do now?You can try to ask your telephone provider for assistance which has the opportunity to verify the presence of any bedbugs through professional tools.
By analyzing the operating line, the telephone company will be able to identify most of the illegal interceptions and any call deviations active on your mobile.
Another thing you could do is use special applications: the aforementioned Device Analyzer, for example, allows you to easily view all the apps on your mobile phone and if you have to identify some suspects, just look for it on Google to understand if it is actually a spyware.
If you have identified a spy program, the first thing to do is to remove it: an optimal decision would be to restore the smartphone to the factory state (obviously, first make sure you have made a backup otherwise you will lose all the data contained on your phone).
As for a hardware device, the situation is certainly more complex because it is a question of physically opening the phone and remediation of the circuits: a job that needs professionals in the sector.
Another advice is to contact the police who will evaluate the situation: if there are actually reasons to suspect that your phone is under control, they will carry out more in -depth investigations.
If you can trace the identity of those who are spying on your phone, you can file a complaint and this person could risk going to prison for a period ranging from 6 months to 4 years because they are guilty of the crime of illegal interference in the private life of others[1].
note
[1] Art.615 bis cod.pen.