Has your phone ever been tampered with before? Do you want to know how to tell if your phone is tapped by the police? How do security agencies do this and why it is important, all of these will be discussed in depth as we move through this content.
We came to realize that modern technology has made it easy for just anyone, not just spies and government agencies to hijack your private communications and spy on you without permission. Fortunately, there are ways to tell if you’re being monitored.
How To Tell If Your Phone Is Tapped By Police
When your phone gets tapped, this actually means you are more vulnerable than you are supposed to be as phone tapping includes access to your text messages, phone calls, photos, emails messages, videos, and even your browsing activities and GPS location.
However, we have compiled a list of steps to take so as to detect if your phone is tapped by police or not.
- Monitor your phone battery life
- Take note of your phone battery temperature
- Stay at alert for strange phone activities
- Coded messages should not be left out
- Background noise
- Unusual transmissions and interference
- A serving area interface and a wiretap detection service.
STEP 1: Monitor your phone battery life
One of the first ways to tell if your phone is being tapped is to take note of the lifespan of your battery. If your phone battery heats up while being used, you should know that this is a significant sign that the battery’s power is draining really fast and this is because the phone is performing some intensive tasks.
However, the phone’s battery gets used when it’s sending voice or text information to the source of the bug or if someone is remotely activating the microphone.
These are signs that you are being monitored, if the battery life is suddenly significantly shorter than it used to be, even after getting a new battery your phone may be tapped by police.
STEP 2: Take note of your phone battery temperature
Another way to detect unusual phone tapping is by constantly checking the temperature of your phone.
Take note that the battery in your cell gets warm when it’s being used, so the strategy is that when you have not been using your phone and you notice any signs of increase in battery temperature, if the phone feels, this probably means someone has been tapping your phone without prior knowledge.
STEP 3: Coded messages should not be left out
We hope you are taking note of these tips as we gradually move to the third step on how to tell if your phone is tapped by police. Now, this 3rd procedure is all about watching out for coded text messages on your phone.
If you get a text message that seems like data coding with numbers and symbols instead of words this could indicate misdirected attempts at data transmission by someone else, which simply means you might be monitored by someone trying to get access to data.
However, if you want to make sure your calls and texts remain private don’t just turn your battery off take the battery out when you’re not using it. This is another very important tip to hold, but not for long.
STEP 4: Stay at alert for strange phone activities
For you to catch a phone intruder, you need to be smart to be able to detect and monitor unusual activity by your mobile phone.
This is very simple as if you notice signs like your phone suddenly starts all by itself without you doing it, it turns on and off by itself, or having difficulty shutting it down or won’t shut down at all. This may be subjected to unauthorized use by security agencies or even cyber criminals.
Step 5: Background noise
This is the interesting part of the strategies, it might sound funny but you need to listen and pay attention to background noise that sometimes occurs when you are on a call.
This so-called clicking sounds or echo’s static may be caused by line or transmission interference or by even equipment used by someone who is tapping and listening to your conversations.
Although only a careless police or hacker will make this kind of mistake, most of them do not let this hilarious mistake occur though. So it is somehow rare.
STEP 6: Inspect your phone bill
On a monthly basis, check your phone billing activities if it indicates a spike in text or data transmission. If there is a high rate of these transmissions, that simply pins out suspicious activities that indicate someone else might be using them secretly.
STEP 7: Watch nearby electronic equipment
It is common for phone transmissions to interfere with signals from other phones, computers, radios and televisions.
Nevertheless, if electronic interference occurs when you are not using your phone, this might be a signal that your phone may be in use by someone else.
STEP 8: Hire a company to perform a wiretap detection
We have come to realize that many companies offer this kind of service but they typically only pick up devices being used within your premises. Nevertheless, this is still a vital way on how to tell if your phone is tapped by police or someone else.
Why And How Do Police Break Into Your Mobile Phone?
When police or a group of detective agencies want to use smartphones as evidence during an investigation, they often don’t have easy access to the device.
Even if they have authorization to search a suspect’s phone, most modern devices lock their data using passcodes or biometric identification.
Law enforcement in many countries uses specialized tools produced by private intelligence companies to break into a phone. Basically, with these tools law enforcement agencies can browse installed apps and often their data, browser- and location history, social media and many other statistics.
- Once a target phone is connected to specialized tools like Grayshift or CCellebrite’s Digital Intelligence Platform UFED, which stands for Universal Forensic Extraction Device.
- This device can in theory bypass patterns and passwords on some iPhone models and extract data from the phone and SIM card. This not only depends on the model and iOS version but also in which state of encryption it currently is. We all know how vulnerable an iPhone is.
- Then, the information extracted will be further used for investigation purposes by the police. This device offers software to easily browse the extracted data.
NOTE: You should be aware that this is not the only method utilized by police to spy on your phone as there are several other various ways which they do this. Most of these techniques might not even be publicized in order not to reveal the top agent strategies.
Code To Check If The Phone Is Tapped By Police
Luckily there are some unique codes you can dial on your mobile device to know if your phone is tapped by someone else. Here are the codes below and what they provide. (*#21# and *#62#)
*#62# : This code will give you information on where your calls and messages are being redirected to by those monitoring your activities.
*#21# — This other code can only be used to check if your calls and messages are being diverted at all, find out more about the code here.
Conclusion
In summary, we discussed how our phone do get tapped and we highlighted ways to know if your phone is a victim. Meanwhile, you go through the content one more if you perhaps seem confused about the whole topic on how your phone gets tapped.
Please be aware that sometimes the aforementioned codes might not be useful for you to tell if your phone is tapped by police, and this happens most times if the agencies monitoring your activities are top guys. This means they might be equipped with very advanced tools which won’t be easily detected with an ordinary code.