Four symptoms of a phone being monitored
1. Sudden pop-up ads
We’ve all had this experience: chatting with a friend about wanting a new pair of sneakers, only to open your phone a few moments later and be bombarded with sneaker ads—incredibly accurate! Normally, mobile phone ads are based on our browsing and search history. However, ads that appear to be innate, seemingly intrusive and intuiting your thoughts, could indicate that your phone is being monitored. Those monitoring your phone use our voice messages to analyze our needs and then use this information to target us with ads, profiting from the process.
2. Your phone is extremely slow

3. Rapid Battery Drain
If your phone used to last a full day on a full charge, but recently, for some reason, the battery has been rapidly draining after just a short use, even without extensive gaming or video streaming, or running many background apps, the battery is still draining much faster than usual. This could be the work of spyware! To continuously monitor our phones and obtain various information, these apps run constantly in the background, consuming a significant amount of battery life. Like a power “vampire,” they can drain your phone’s battery without you noticing.
4. Unexplained Data Loss
Another scenario involves experiencing a sudden decrease in data usage, even though you haven’t used your data to download large files or watch HD videos online. This is because the monitoring software transmits collected private information, such as voice messages, text messages, and location data, to its operators over the internet. This data transmission consumes a significant amount of data, leading to abnormal data usage.
What should we do if we discover these signs of monitoring on our phone?
First, open the security manager in your phone and perform a comprehensive deep scan to identify and remove any malicious monitoring apps lurking in the dark.
Second, carefully review the permissions of your apps and disable any unnecessary permissions, especially sensitive permissions like the microphone, camera, and address book. Don’t allow apps to access your privacy without permission.
Another important point to note: When using your phone outdoors, avoid connecting to unauthorized public Wi-Fi, as this can easily lead to private information leaks.
Source: Zhihu

