It is easier to access your phone and its data than you might have thought. In fact, it would be safe to assume that such breaches are getting more and more common with every passing day. That’s why it’s important to identify tracked cell phones.
The reality also matches this assumption because 60% of Americans believe they are being tracked by cybercriminals as per a survey. Are you also the one who is suspecting the same?
Then we, at Insiderbits, will show you here the signs to identify tracked cell phones, what you can do about it, and how you can prevent it from happening (if you are safe, yet).
7 Signs to Know Your Phone Is Being Tracked
When starting to identify tracked cell phones, some unusual activities could happen with them. Here are some of the signs to look out for:
- Unusual battery drain – Have you recently noticed that your phone running out of battery quicker than usual? If yes, then this should get your shield up.
Battery getting drained is a common mishappening on a tracked cell phone, even with normal or no usage at all.
- Excessive data usage – Spy apps use your phone data to track your activities. Thus, you may find that there is a surge in your daily data usage if your phone is being tracked.
- Phone getting slower – Spyware silently uses a part of your RAM for its activities, which is responsible for the speed of your phone. So, with lower RAM left for your use, you will experience some lag or slowness in your phone.
- Overheating – The higher the usage of RAM in your phone, the more chances of it getting overheated. Thus, since spyware also consumes the power of your RAM, you may find your phone getting overheated at times.
- Unusual background noise during calls – Background noise during your phone calls is a sign that there may be a third party listening to your conversations. So, keep your ear up for unusual sounds such as clicking or tapping while on a call.
A one-off incident doesn’t indicate anything. But, if it happens over and over, that’s how you will identify tracked cell phones.
- Suspicious or unauthorized apps installed – Spyware may automatically install some apps on your phone. So, check if there are any apps you don’t recall installing. This is especially important if you already have a lot of apps on your phone.
- Unusual text messages or phone calls – Have you ever received some messages with jumbled letters from unknown sources that make no sense? Such unusual messages are an attempt to get access to your phone.
What to Do if Your Phone is Being Tracked?
- Remove suspicious apps – Whether you are an Android or iOS user, you can check in your settings the apps that use the battery the most. Remove all the battery-draining apps that you don’t use much. Those may be the prime suspects of being a spy.
- Perform a factory reset – We understand this may not be the most feasible thing for you to do but resetting your phone to its initial stage is the best way to ensure that your phone is not being tracked anymore.
- Scan for malware – If factory reset is not an option, then at least you can scan your phone for malware and spyware. Use any of the antivirus apps or spyware scanning apps to remove such junk easily.
How to Prevent Your Phone from Being Tracked in the Future?
If you are yet to be a victim of these hidden attacks or want to prevent any more such attacks from happening to you again, then here are the measures you should take to protect your privacy:
- Don’t root your Android phone or jailbreak your iPhone. It removes restrictions for you as well as the hackers and thus, increases the odds of your phone getting hacked.
- Use a VPN to make it harder for spies to track your online activities. One of the best VPN apps you can try is NordVPN.
- Updating your software reduces the loopholes for hackers to enter your phone. So, always update your phone OS and apps as soon as possible.
- Never click on suspicious links or engage with text from an unknown sender. That is often a way for spies to take control of your sensitive data.
- Download apps only from reliable developers and from trusted marketplaces such as Google Play Store or App Store. Downloading apps from elsewhere can easily result in you downloading a spying app.
Conclusion
Your privacy is your responsibility to protect. And it may well already be compromised. If that is so, take the measures to take back your control and prevent it from happening again.
