The Official Barefoot Professional Investigations Blog

Let’s get straight to the point. If you’ve landed on this page, you likely live in the Charlotte area, you’re a mobile phone owner, and you have reason to believe your mobile phone is being monitored. Since most of us rely heavily on our mobile devices, shutting down and going into hiding isn’t quite an option. How can you determine whether your phone is or is not safe? Just as importantly, what comes next? These three signs will let you know if it’s time to reach out to a private investigator like Barefoot Professional Investigations for cell phone debugging.

Electronics lose speed as they age and get clogged with software, registry cruft, and other digital detritus. For that reason, an older mobile phone won’t be as zippy as it was when you first purchased it. But if you’re noticing that your battery drains quickly even when you’re not using it, or your phone is running much slower than usual — especially when odd device behavior comes on suddenly — a bit of caution may be in order. First, go through and close any applications you’re not using; it can be easy to forget how many things we have running at once. If that doesn’t solve the problem, go into your settings and check  the load on your processor and memory. If you have nothing open that you know of and that activity, or your data usage, is still off the charts, there’s the possibility that your phone is being monitored.

Are your friends receiving unusual texts, emails, or notifications in your name? Are you noticing odd noises, a hollow sound, or an echo on your phone calls? Are sites showing up in your browser history that you haven’t visited? Perhaps you’ve even gotten a request from a site where you’ve set up two-factor authorization when you weren’t trying to sign in. Many types of spyware and monitoring applications won’t simply monitor; they can allow backdoor access to your other apps and functions, leaving your personal and financial information in danger. Trust your gut.

We all have an application or two (or twenty) that we’ve installed, used once, and then promptly forgotten. Maybe you’ve changed your weather app over security concerns, the novelty has worn off of Words with Friends, or you never took up ukulele like you’d planned. Uninstall things you’re not using, and if you notice during that process that there are applications you didn’t install, it may be a sign you’re being watched.

Now, a caveat: we cannot troubleshoot every instance of “monitoring” that takes place through your phone. Talking about your favorite artist’s new album only to be greeted by an ad for it the next time you log onto Facebook, for instance, is a result of some sites’ and apps’ use of sophisticated tracking cookies and digital fingerprinting. Some applications — especially games and other freeware — exist primarily for this purpose, and are little more than ill-disguised malware. 

But if you’re noticing some of the signs we discussed earlier and have a suspicion you can’t quite shake, get in touch with Barefoot Professional Investigations. From listening device detection to cell phone debugging, we can determine whether your suspicions are well-founded, and troubleshoot the problem if it turns out you are being monitored.

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