Cellular Phone Forensic Blog

Cellular Phone Forensics

Is your phone being monitored?

10 signs of spyware on your cell.

1. Battery Drain – Is your phone battery running down faster than normal? It is Warm to touch when not being used?
   
2. Increased data Usage – Have you noticed an increase in your normal data usage? Is there also an increase in SMS messages?
   
3. Receiving Unusual Texts – Are you receiving strange text messages containing random numbers, symbols or characters?
   
4. Phone Shuts down – Does your phone regularly power down or restart by itself, even when the battery is charged?
   
5. Odd Phone Behavior – Is your device just plain acting up? Locking up? Could be simply too many apps, but if after deleting junk apps does it continue?
   
6. Screen Flickering - Does the screen light up and come on out of sleep by itself? Does it flash on then off or is there a change in brightness?
   
7. Background Noise – While bad connections are common with cell phones, watch for consistent lack of call quality or “tunnel voice”.
   
8. Decrease in internet access speeds.
   
9. Do you have problems shutting down your phone? Does screen remain lit for a time after shutting down?
   
10. Do other seem to have detailed knowledge about private things in your life or your activities?
    

*  There are numerous brands of Spy Ware for phone and different categories within the term spyware.

The run of the mill "malware" as we will call it is from your everyday activity, phone usage and downloading.  While in no means is this a less of a security threat to you and presents substantial risk for identify theft., we are focusing in this discussion with spyware type of monitoring that is installed by someone with physical access to you phone.  This Spy software allows the installer to remotely monitor you, your phone and all your activity on the phone.  The good ones allow for the speaker to be turned on and the 3rd party can use your phone as a bug.  It also give access to actively listen into calls, intercept text and emails.  Anything you do on the phone is capture and forwarded to that 3rd party.