Is Anyone Spying on Your Cell Phone ?
No
wadays, anyone who has an access to your cell phone can easily install a spyware software and monitor your calls, SMS messages, emails, browser history and even your location. Some advanced spywares can turn on your microphone and capture the phones surrounding sounds, as well as downloading the photos in from your phone gallery.
The complexity of the modern cell-phones (aka smartphones) are giving us great opportunities. The new generation smartphones are almost as powerful as one low to mid-level PC.
Do we realize that the power we are carrying in our pockets can be turned easily against us ?
The power and the Internet connectivity of our cell phones can record our calls, SMS messages, emails, photos, videos, social network activity, and send them to anyone, anywhere in the Internet.
SpyWares are malicious pieces of software that are installed on your cell phone and do the job for those that are spying on you. Usually, spywares are hidden apps, and you cannot see them in the application list of your phone, they run automatically when you turn on your phone and record every voice call, SMS message, email etc., sending the data to a protected server on the Internet.
What are the common symptoms of infected phones ?
- battery drains fast – because SpyWare apps runs in background and put a load on the CPU of the phone, usually they drain the battery faster than normal.
- exceed of data plan limit – all recorded voice calls, videos, etc. are transmitted through your data plan to the Internet.
How To Prevent Cell-Phone Spying
- don’t let your phone out of your sight – the spyware apps don’t act like computer viruses and don’t spread from device-to-device. If you have a spyware it’s installed on your phone from someone – boss, husband/wife, parents, etc.
- always check app permissions when installing new app - the good for Android OS is that when you install a new app, you see a list of requested permissions. If you see ant suspicious permissions, don’t install this app, or ask the developer why those permissions are required by the app.
- don’t install unverified apps - even there are some spyware apps on Google Play, always check app ratings and users comments before installing a new app.
- use Anti SpyWare scannes - like in PCs, there are SpyWare scanners for mobiles too. Anti Spy Mobile does a great job. The app scans your phone for well-known spywares and also analyzes the permissions of all other apps installed on your phone. You are notified if any of the programs on your phone has any suspicious spy-able permissions. The paid version has a build in background scanner that ensures further protection of your phone making a daily check of your apps, without interrupting the main phone activity.
How To Ensure That My Phone is NOT Spied for FREE (AndroidOS) ?
- Download Anti Spy Mobile FREE - open GooglePlay on your cell phone and search for “Anti Spy Mobile Free” or use the barcode on the right to navigate directly.
- Run the App - Once installed the application will show you a welcome screen. Click OK and the scanner will start scanning your device.
- SpyWares List - if there are any Spywares found on your device, you will see a list of them in a separate window. Click on each app in this list, and then click on the “Uninstall” button.
How To Ensure Further Protection of My Phone ?
Download Anti Spy Mobile Pro – the paid app has a build-in background scanner which runs every day and ensures that your device is clean. In addition the scanner detects the DroidDream virus – one of the most powerful viruses for Android.
Is your Pro version fully compatible with ics software?
Using a htc sensation with ics software
Hi David,
Yes, it is compatible and the scanner works fine. No problems are reported on ICS versions, except the lack of Action bar (the top bar used in ICS), which will be added till the end of the week.
Thank you for your interest !
Hi David,
The PRO version is now updated with Action bar menu and is fully compatible with ICS.
Thanks !
Can I have AntiSpyMobile and Lookout Security & Antivirus installed on the same phone. If so will there be conflicts? Can I manually run a scan with AntiSpyMobile and not have it run in the background?
I would like to have both apps, but just use AntiSpyMoble for running and additional scan manually.
Thanks for the help.
Hi Steve,
Yes, both apps are compatible with each other. You can turn off the background scanner from Menu/Settings – “Enable Auto Scan” option in Anti Spy Mobile PRO version.
Although, if you want to run the scans manually, you can use the free version. We are updating it with the latest spyware definitions too.
Does this software detect Mobistealth and/or Stealthgenie?
Hi Roob,
Yes, detects both of them. Currently they are listed as warnings but both of them will be escalated as Spywares on the next release.
Here are the reported package names, if you have one of these:
com.device.system – StealthGenie
phone.Security – Mobistealth
A new version of Free and Pro was released yesterday. Now both Mobistealth and Stealthgenie are reported as Spywares.
Does your product detect Flexispy and Eblaster Mobile for Android?
If you can prove your picks these up. I have both installed on a phone we show customers how they work on. We will tell everyone to use your product to find these so called undetectable programs.
There are many “stealth” spywares that are detected by Anti Spy Mobile. Both Flexispy and Eblaster are deteced too – the first one shows up like “com.mobilefonex.mobilebackup”, and the Eblaster Mobile is listed as “com.android.system”.
I do not have a data plan on my phone but my phone is being tracked & listened in on. Will a new SIM card remove this from my phone?
Hi Wanda,
It depends how your phone is monitored. If you don’t have a data plan (and you don’t use the wireless internet on your phone), than the tracking can be made by external hardware (which is very expensive and not available to mass public).
If your phone is Android, you can try Anti Spy Mobile Free and run a scan, if you have a jail-breaked iPhone, I would recommend you to factoy reset it.