You have suspicions that your spouse may be spying on you by snooping through your phone, but how can you know for sure?
Take a minute to check your phone for these four telltale clues that someone else has been tapping and swiping where they shouldn’t be.
1. Check the order of your recently used apps
On a newer iPhone, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and hold your finger in the middle of the screen for a second or two and a carousel of recent apps you used will pop up, in the order you last used them. If you remember that you were last on your phone using the CNN app to check the news, but now it’s showing that Facebook Messenger was the last app opened on your phone, it could mean someone was snooping.
On older iPhones, click the home button twice to see recent apps.
2. Check your phone’s screen time records
Your iPhone creates a record of all your recent screen time, recording when and for how long you used apps on your phone. To find this timeline, go to Settings—>Screen Time—>See All Activity. Take a look at your daily activity. In you weren’t using your phone at 2 am, but your Screen Time record shows that you were using the Gmail app at the time, someone may have prying into your email.
3. Messaging app notifications don’t match up
You click on your Instagram app to check your DMs. There’s a message you haven’t read, but you didn’t see a red alert notification on the app when you opened your phone. This could be a sign that someone else already read your messages. Scan through messages, texts, emails and other private messages marked as read that you don’t remember opening. Check your email trash folder for deleted messages that may be the action of someone snooping on your phone.
4. There are apps on your phone that you didn’t install
Scroll through your phone’s home screen. Are there apps that you don’t remember installing, or apps that have vague names and don’t seem to do very much when you open them? If you see anything that looks odd or out of place, check your app history. On an iPhone, go to the App Store and tap Purchased to see a list of all the apps you’ve downloaded. You can then delete any suspicious apps. Check your phone regularly for new apps.
How to protect yourself from cyber spying
To protect your phone’s privacy, cyber security experts recommend taking commonsense measures…
- Ensure you’ve got a passcode on your lockscreen, and change it regularly.
- Enable password logins for all apps, especially social media and messaging apps.
- Don’t leave your phone unguarded when not in use. Keep it in a secure location.
- Turn off all location data to prevent tracking.
- Establish your own Apple ID or, if that is not possible due to your phone plan, disable all shared functions on apps. (For example, on phones connected through a single Apple ID, what you search for on one phone can show up in the search history of another device connected to the ID.)
- Consider deleting sensitive conversations after you’ve had them, including text and voice messages.
Is your spouse spying on you?
If your relationship has hit a rocky patch, snooping can be a knee-jerk reaction to fleeting moments of doubt or jealously. But in other relationships, spousal spying is part of an abusive pattern of control with smartphone snooping used as a tool of manipulation and control.
Are you caught up in abusive relationship where your spouse or partner is using information from your phone to threaten you or control you, including stealing and sharing intimate photos (revenge porn) or installing tracing apps to track your every move?
Cyberstalking and cyber harassment are both crimes of domestic violence in New Jersey. If cyberstalking and cyber harassment are present in your relationship, you can get help by filing for a restraining against your abuser and taking other appropriate legal measures.
Learn more: 4 New Ways Abusers Are Cyberstalking in 2020 — And What You Can Do To Protect Yourself
Do you need help safeguarding yourself from a spying spouse? We encourage you to speak confidentially with a family law attorney to learn your rights. Please contact us at 888-888-0919, or click the green button below to schedule your virtual meeting.
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