That feeling that your phone knows too much, or that someone else does, isn’t paranoia. It’s one of the most common questions people bring to a private investigator, and there’s usually a real, checkable reason behind it.
Here’s what we’ll walk through:
The difference between passive data collection and someone actually watching you
Technical warning signs and human behavioral red flags, side by side
What’s legal, what isn’t, and who’s allowed to track your phone
How to check your phone yourself, step by step
What to do if a partner or employer is the one doing it
Worried someone’s tracking your phone right now? Call Lawrence Ryan Investigations for a free, confidential consultation.
One quick distinction before we start: this guide covers location tracking and spyware apps, the kind of monitoring software that watches where you go and what’s on your screen. If what you’re actually worried about is someone listening to your calls, check out our guide on how to tell if your phone is tapped instead. That’s call interception, a different problem with different fixes.
How Common Is This, Really?
More common than most people think. One in three women and one in six men experience stalking at some point in their life, and roughly 13.5 million people go through it every year in the US alone, according to Gen Digital’s Stalking Awareness Month report, produced with the National Network to End Domestic Violence.
Globally, Kaspersky’s State of Stalkerware research found over 31,000 people affected by tracking software in a single year, with 40% of everyone surveyed saying they’d experienced or suspected being stalked, according to Kaspersky’s 2023 stalkerware report. So if you’re sitting here wondering whether your phone is being tracked, you’re not overreacting, and you’re definitely not the only one asking.
Not All Phone Tracking Is the Same
Before you start checking your phone for spyware, it helps to separate two very different things that are both called “tracking.”
The Kind of Tracking Almost Everyone Has
Your phone talks to a lot of companies. Weather apps want your location. Social apps track your online activity to sell ads. Retailers use Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals in stores to see how long you linger near a shelf. This is passive, corporate data harvesting, and while it’s worth limiting, it isn’t personal surveillance by someone you know.
You gave most of this access away yourself, usually by tapping “Allow” on a permission prompt without reading it. Go to your phone’s privacy settings and look at which apps have access to your location, camera, or microphone, and see how many actually need it. Most don’t.
The Kind of Tracking That Should Worry You
This is different. This is a spouse, ex, employer, or stranger who wants to know specifically where you are, who you’re talking to, or what’s on your screen, and who is using an app, a tracking device, or account access to get it without your knowledge.
That’s the kind we’ll focus on for the rest of this guide.
Will #21# tell me if my phone is tapped?
Not quite, and this is a common mix-up. *#21# and *#62# are network-level USSD codes that show whether your calls, texts, or data are being forwarded to another number, which is a call-forwarding check, not a spyware check. They won’t detect an app installed on your phone that’s tracking your location or reading your screen.
Signs Your Phone Is Being Tracked
Some signs are technical. Some are behavioral. The strongest cases usually have both.
Technical Warning Signs
Your phone’s battery drains way faster than it used to. Monitoring software runs constantly in the background, and that costs power. If your phone’s battery drains from full to half by lunchtime with normal use, take note.
Your data usage climbs without explanation. Spyware has to send what it collects somewhere. Check your phone bill or your data usage settings for a spike you can’t account for.
Your phone runs hot when you’re not using it. A phone that’s warm while sitting idle in your pocket is often working harder than it should be.
An orange or green dot shows up when you’re not using the camera or microphone. On modern iPhones and Android phones, that’s the system telling you an app just accessed your camera or mic. If you didn’t open anything, that’s worth investigating.
You find an app you don’t remember installing. Scroll through your full app list, not just your home screen. Some monitoring apps hide their icon entirely or disguise it as something boring, like a calculator or a system utility. Our guide on how to find hidden apps on iPhone and Android walks through exactly where these hide.
Your phone starts acting strangely. Random restarts, the screen lighting up on its own, settings changing themselves. None of these alone means much, but together they’re a pattern worth checking.
Someone Watching You? Act Now
Hidden cameras, tapped phones, and stalkers aren’t just unsettling—they’re dangerous. Our Chicago-based experts find and stop surveillance quickly, protecting your safety and peace of mind. Every investigation is confidential.
Human Behavioral Red Flags
Sometimes the tech signs are subtle, and the human ones aren’t.
Someone always seems to know where you are, even places you didn’t mention
A partner or ex shows up “coincidentally” at places you only decided to go last minute
Someone references details from texts or calls they shouldn’t have access to
A partner gets unusually upset when you’re somewhere they didn’t expect
Someone insists on knowing your phone passcode “for emergencies” and won’t let it go
One or two of these can be a coincidence. A pattern of them usually isn’t. If the details someone knows seem to be coming from your social accounts rather than your phone directly, that’s a related but different problem, and it’s worth reading about how social media investigations work.
Can my phone be tracked if location services are off?
To some degree, yes. Turning off location services stops apps from pulling GPS coordinates directly, but your phone can still be located through cell tower triangulation, Wi-Fi network connections, and Bluetooth signals, none of which require GPS to be on. It’s a real reduction in precision, not a full guarantee of privacy. If someone has account-level access (like a shared Apple ID or Google account) or spyware already installed, turning off location services alone won’t stop them.
Legal vs. Illegal Phone Tracking
This is where a lot of people get stuck, because some tracking really is legal, and some absolutely isn’t.
When Tracking Is Legal
Parental control apps on a minor child’s phone, when the parent owns the device or the account
Family location sharing you turned on yourself, like Find My iPhone or Life360, that everyone in the group agreed to
Employer MDM (mobile device management) on a company-owned phone, usually disclosed in an employee handbook
When It Crosses the Line Into Stalkerware
Installing tracking or monitoring software on an adult’s personal phone without their knowledge or consent is a different matter entirely, and it’s not a gray area. The federal government has taken this seriously: the FTC permanently banned the stalkerware company SpyFone and its CEO from the surveillance business after finding that the app secretly harvested people’s location, messages, and browsing activity, according to the FTC’s official order.
Depending on the state, installing spyware on someone else’s phone without permission can violate wiretap laws, computer fraud statutes, or stalking laws, sometimes all three at once. If you’re trying to understand where Illinois draws these lines, our guide to Illinois surveillance law breaks it down in plain language.
Can someone track my phone without physical access to it?
Yes, in a few ways. The most common is remote installation through a phishing link or malicious app download that you tap without realizing what it does. Account-level access is another: if someone knows your Apple ID or Google password, they can see your location and device activity without ever touching your phone. Physical access still makes stalkerware easier and more thorough to install, but it’s not required.
How Stalkerware Differs From Parental Control or MDM Apps
On a technical level, stalkerware and legitimate monitoring software often use similar methods: both can access location, messages, and app activity. The difference is consent and disclosure.
A parental control app is installed openly, usually shows up in the app list, and the person being monitored (or their parent) knows it’s there. Stalkerware is built to hide. It’s designed to run without an icon, survive phone restarts, and avoid detection by the person using the phone. If an app is going out of its way to stay invisible on an adult’s personal phone, that’s the tell, and it’s a good moment to also lock down the rest of your phone’s security, not just remove the one app you found.
Trusted Contact or Stranger? How to Tell Who’s Tracking You
If you’ve confirmed location sharing is on, the next question is who it’s shared with.
Check your Find My (iPhone) or Google location sharing settings and look at exactly who has access. It’s easy to forget you shared your location with someone months ago.
Check which Google or Apple accounts are logged into yours. A device you don’t recognize signed into your account is a stronger sign of a stranger or unwanted access than a person you know.
Ask yourself if the access lines up with a real relationship. A family member with whom you knowingly share your location is a very different situation from finding your location shared with an account you don’t recognize at all. If the pattern feels less like a family member and more like someone following you, our guide on how to catch a stalker covers what the law allows next.
How to Check If Your Phone Is Being Tracked: Step by Step
1. Check which apps have location access
Go to your privacy or location settings and review every app with permission. Revoke access from anything that doesn’t need it to function.
2. Check your data usage and battery stats
Look for one app that quietly uses far more data or battery than it should for what it does.
3. Check your full app list, not just your home screen
Some monitoring software hides its icon. Scroll through Settings > Apps to see everything actually installed on your phone.
4. Check your phone bill
An unexpected data usage spike often shows up here even before it’s obvious on the device itself.
5. Observe what happens in airplane mode
Turning on airplane mode temporarily prevents many apps from transmitting data through cellular and Wi-Fi connections. It’s not proof of anything by itse
lf since some tracking resumes the moment you turn it back off, but a phone that behaves noticeably differently in airplane mode is worth a closer look.
If you’ve gone through all of this and you’re still not sure, that’s normal. Consumer-level checks catch a lot, but a phone actively infected with spyware can be built specifically to hide from them. That’s when it’s worth having someone with the right tools take a real look.
Lawrence Ryan Investigations offers digital forensics and spyware detection services for exactly this situation, whether it’s your phone, your car, or your home. Reach out for a free consultation, and we’ll walk you through what a professional sweep actually involves.
How can I block my phone from being tracked?
Start by revoking location, camera, and microphone permissions from any app that doesn’t need them, removing apps you don’t recognize, and turning off location sharing with anyone who shouldn’t have it. Updating your phone’s operating system and enabling two-factor authentication on your accounts closes off two of the most common ways tracking software gets installed in the first place.
Real Scenario: “My Ex Knows Where I Am. What Do I Check First?”
This is one of the most common situations we hear about, so here’s a practical order of operations.
Check location sharing first. Look at Find My or Google location sharing and see exactly who has access. This is the single most common culprit and takes thirty seconds to check.
Check your app list for anything unfamiliar. Especially anything installed around the time the relationship ended.
Think about physical access. Did they have your phone unsupervised recently, even for a few minutes? That’s usually all it takes to install monitoring software.
Check your car too. If someone’s tracking your phone, it’s worth checking whether a GPS tracker has also been placed on your car. We see the two together often enough that it’s worth ruling out at the same time.
Don’t confront them yet. See the next section on why that matters.
If You Think a Partner or Employer Is Tracking You
If this involves a current or former partner, or an employer who has no business monitoring your personal device, the technical fix and the safety plan are two separate things, and the safety plan comes first.
Don’t remove anything you find right away. Deleting a tracking app can alert the person who installed it that you’ve discovered it, which can escalate a dangerous situation. Document what you find first: screenshots, dates, app names.
Use a different device to research and make calls if you can. A borrowed phone, a friend’s laptop, or a burner phone keeps your search itself from being visible to whoever’s watching.
If you feel unsafe, reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline in addition to anything else you do. They can help you build a safety plan around removing the tracking, not just remove it and hope for the best.
If you’ll need this to hold up legally, for a protective order, a custody case, or a police report, a licensed investigator can document what’s on the device properly instead of you accidentally destroying the evidence while removing it.
This is exactly the kind of situation our domestic investigation team handles regularly, and if there’s any chance you’ll need documentation for a legal case, it’s worth talking to us before you touch anything. Contact us for a free, confidential consultation.
How to Stop Someone From Tracking Your Phone
Revoke unnecessary app permissions for location, camera, and microphone across the board
Remove unfamiliar apps once you’ve documented them if you might need the record later
Turn off location sharing with anyone who shouldn’t have it anymore
Update your phone’s operating system, since updates often patch the exact vulnerabilities spyware relies on
Change your passwords and turn on two-factor authentication, especially if someone may have had account-level access rather than just app access
Consider a factory reset as a last resort, but only after you’ve documented everything you found, since a reset erases evidence along with the tracking software
If none of this puts your mind at ease, or you know something’s there and just can’t find it, that’s exactly what a professional sweep is for. Our guide to sweeping for hidden devices covers the broader picture beyond just your phone, and our team can run the same kind of check professionally on your phone, your car, or your home.
When to Call a Professional
A DIY check catches a lot. It doesn’t catch everything, especially well-hidden stalkerware or a situation where you need documented, court-ready proof rather than just peace of mind. When that proof needs to hold up in court, a licensed investigator can also run proper cell phone data extraction that preserves texts, call logs, and app data without disturbing the timestamps a court will want to see.
If you’ve been through the steps above and you’re still uneasy, or you already know you’ll need evidence for a legal case, that’s when it makes sense to bring in a licensed investigator.
Lawrence Ryan Investigations has helped Chicago-area clients confirm and document phone tracking, spyware, and stalking for over 40 years. Contact us for a free, confidential consultation, available 24/7.
