Have you recently been interrogated by the cops? Are you stuck in a legal scandal? Have the police acquired your personal information, such as your phone number? If you answered yes to any or all of the above questions, or even if you don’t want to answer these questions, the police might be continuously tracking your activity. If that’s true, chances are high that they are doing this by tapping your phone. Phone tapping is a very common method law enforcement uses to track the phone calls of potential suspects to spy on their activities.
They do this by secretly listening to your phone calls to know more about your activities and plans. The thought of getting your phone tapped might be pretty unsettling in the least, and you might want to find out whether your thoughts are real.
This blog will help you determine whether the police are tapping your phone. Read on to learn all about it.
Disclaimer: This blog is strictly prepared and intended for educational purposes. Neither the author of this blog nor the website owner encourages any kind of illegal activities whatsoever.
Can you know if the police are tapping your phone?
The police tap your phone if they suspect you are involved in criminal activities. Tapping your phone requires a warrant. Once the police prepare a warrant for monitoring your phone, they can show it to your network provider or phone manufacturer and order them to tap your phone activities.
Now, there are several ways to tap a phone. Depending on how your phone is tapped, you might or might not be able to find out.
Case 1: ISP-level monitoring
If the police are tapping your phone from the ISP/network provider level, they might record your calls and monitor your internet activity, such as Google searches, browsing history, and any information you access online.
In this case, you will likely never know you are being monitored. This is because everything is happening digitally without any dependence on your device. Calls can be monitored as you talk, and your browsing history is always visible to your network provider.
Case 2: Device-level monitoring
Another way of tapping your phone is achieved by remotely getting access to your device. This is a more in-depth method of monitoring your activities, as it requires installing spyware on your device.
It is not very common to do this kind of thing, even for the police and the government. However, it is certainly possible and has been done in the past. But the good news is that it is easier to identify this kind of tapping as your device is directly involved.
How to Know If Phone is Being Tapped by Police
If you are involved in a legal investigation and think that the police are tapping your device, you can try to look for some symptoms that can indicate a possible monitoring activity. However, you should remember that if the tapping is happening from the network provider level, you might not find anything at all.
Nevertheless, you can look for the following indications if you think your phone is being tapped.
1. Battery drains too fast
If your phone is being tapped by spyware installed without your knowledge and consent, the malware will usually keep running in the background at all times. Due to this continuous usage, your phone’s battery will likely drain too quickly.
Therefore, if you notice that your battery has suddenly started to drain faster than before, spyware might be a potential cause. Obviously, there are other reasons why your battery may drain quickly. You cannot arrive at a proper decision just due to this symptom.
2. Unusually high data consumption
Another obvious effect of active malware in your phone is how your phone’s data gets consumed. Any kind of virus, malware or spyware uses your device’s data to send the information it has collected.
As a result, you will likely observe that your phone’s data is getting exhausted too fast.
Most modern smartphones display your daily data usage on the notification panel. But if you can’t see your data usage here, you can go to Settings >> Cellular on your iPhone to track your data usage.
On Android, go to Settings >> Connections >> Data Usage to view your data usage for the given cycle. To view the data usage for today, change the Billing cycle to today’s date. For example, if today is January 27, set the billing cycle to the 27th day of each month for viewing today’s data usage.
3. Unrecognized app installations
If an application has been installed remotely on your phone without your permission, you might be able to see its name. (It’s best not to open the app.)
To view a list of all applications installed on your device, go to Settings >> Applications and carefully review the list of all the applications. If you notice a new third-party app you never installed, this might be the hidden culprit behind tapping your phone.
4. Strange texts
Yes, you might receive strange coded messages that don’t seem to make any sense. They might seem gibberish and unreadable, sent from random unknown numbers. Similarly, you might also notice similar messages being sent from your device to unknown numbers. If these texts appear regularly, it may very well indicate something suspicious.
5. Unsolicited use of Mic and Camera (Android 12 and above)
Many times during the day, malware might try to capture your picture or voice without you knowing it. It does that by accessing your phone’s camera and microphone. You might not know about it all unless your phone has those indicator lights in place.
On an iPhone, you can see a green dot at the top when any app accesses your camera. Likewise, an orange dot indicates an app is using your microphone.
On Android devices with Android 12 and above, you’ll see a green-colored microphone or camera icon in the top-right corner of the screen when the microphone or camera is being accessed.
6. Trouble powering off your phone
If your phone houses hidden malware that keeps running in the background, the malware can affect how your phone shuts down. Your phone needs to close all the running apps before powering off. However, running malware can interfere with this process and slow down your phone’s shutdown time.
The bottom line
The indication mentioned above can result from hidden spyware in your phone. However, you should also remember that these issues can also occur independently without any spyware behind them.
Therefore, you shouldn’t be worried unless three or more of these symptoms occur simultaneously.
Closing thoughts
Phone tapping is a common procedure that is often adopted by the police to track down potential suspects to get sufficient informational proof regarding them. They can trap your phone at the ISP or device level.
Depending on how your phone is tapped, you might detect some suspicious activities like battery draining and unrecognized apps. If several indications are true for you simultaneously, your phone might be getting tapped.
Did the information in this blog help you understand phone tapping better? Tell us in the comments and share this blog with anyone it might help.
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