When the person watching you knows you
Most tracking is not done by strangers. It is done by someone who had your phone in their hand.
This guide is written mainly for women, because the pattern it describes falls on women far more often. It applies to anyone in the same situation.
Read this first
If you can, continue on a different device. A borrowed phone, a friend's
laptop, a computer at work or a library. Software of this kind reports what
you do on the phone, including that you went looking for it — so searching
your own handset can tell the person watching that you know, before you are
ready for them to know.
Tell someone you trust, in person, before you change anything. The most
dangerous moment is not the monitoring; it is the point where the other
person realises it has been found.
Nothing below is urgent enough to do tonight if doing it would put you
in a room with someone angry. A plan made calmly next week is worth more
than an app deleted in a hurry.
The uncomfortable part
Stalkerware is not installed by hackers. It is installed by somebody who had your unlocked phone for two minutes — a partner, a relative, an ex. It usually hides itself, and it reports your location, your messages and your calls.
You do not need to prove anything to anyone to take the steps below.
Signs worth noticing
None of these prove anything on their own:
- The battery drains much faster than it used to
- The phone is warm when you are not using it
- Someone knows things you did not tell them
- Settings you did not change have changed
What to check
- Apps you do not recognise. Look through every installed app, including ones with dull names like "System Service".
- Accounts on your phone. Settings, then Accounts. Anything signed in that is not yours.
- Location sharing. In your maps app and in your phone's own settings, check who you are sharing your location with. This is the most common one, and it is often not hidden at all — it was simply set up and forgotten.
- Your email forwarding rules, which quietly copy everything you receive.
Before you remove anything
Think about safety first. If the person watching you would become angry when the watching stops, removing it suddenly can tell them you know. There is no single right answer here — but the decision is yours to make deliberately, not by accident.
If you are in danger, tell someone you trust in person before you change anything on the phone.
Resetting properly
If you want to be certain, a factory reset removes it — but only if you then set the phone up as new and change your passwords from a different device. Restoring from the old backup can restore the problem with it.
Change the password on your email first, then everything else. Turn on two-factor authentication while you are there.
This site cannot help you directly — it takes no reports and has no inbox. What it can do is tell you plainly what is happening and what stops it.