With so much sensitive information on our phones and laptops, it’s understandable that we don’t want unwanted people looking around. That is why it is essential to take certain measures. But you may have let your guard down, and now you suspect that someone has tampered with your gear.
You may easily do some basic checks to determine if you were a victim of an invader. These diagnostics won’t always provide conclusive proof, but they can give you a reasonable indication of whether someone has been scrolling in places they shouldn’t.
How To See If Someone Had Been Snooping On Your Devices
Smartphones
Apps on smartphones cannot be hidden. If someone has installed a new app on your handheld device, it will appear in the main list. On Android, go to Settings > Applications > See all apps. Simply open Settings and scroll down to view everything that’s installed on iOS.
You can also view recently installed applications, but only on iPhones. Scroll to the App Library screen (to the right of all your home screens), and you’ll find a Recently Added window with the most recently added apps.
If you’ve enabled browser and app activity tracking for your Google account, this will show you what’s been going on with any Android devices linked to your Google ID, as well as any Google applications you’re registered into on iOS devices. To enable this function, go to the My Google Activity page on the web and check which applications or websites an invader may have visited.
If you’ve enabled the option, the newer versions of Android and iOS will also maintain local logs of device activities. Select Digital Wellbeing & Parental Controls from the Android Settings menu, or Screen Time from the iOS Settings menu. There, you may look at which applications have been used in the last 24 hours or days—if you notice apps you don’t recall using, it might be a hint that someone else has been using your phone.
Then there are the activity records within particular programs, such as your mobile web browser. To access recently seen web pages, launch Chrome for Android, hit the three dots (top right), and then choose History. To see the browser’s history in iOS Safari, open any tab, press the book icon, then tap the clock icon.
If you use Android, another place to look is your notification history. To view recent alerts, go to Settings, then Notifications, then Notification history. If an unwanted visitor has been on your phone, there may be signs of what they’ve been up to here.
Laptops
Checking for recent activity on your laptop is identical to the method we just discussed for your phone. Examining the installed programs is an excellent place to start: on Windows, click Apps from Settings and navigate to the Apps & features panel. To discover if something new has been installed on your computer, sort the list of programs by the installation date.
Navigate to the Applications folder in the Finder on macOS. By tapping View, Sort By, and Date Added, you may organize the installed applications by date. On a Mac, there’s also Screen Time, which operates the same way it does on an iPhone or iPad. To view which apps have recently been opened, enter the Apple menu, then select System Preferences and Screen Time.
Digging through your web browser’s history may uncover behavior on your laptop that you were unaware of. To see it on Chrome, for example, click the three dots (top right), then History. Select History, then Show All History in Safari. Any other browser you or someone else has used should have a comparable history option that is easy to locate.
Any action using Google apps, from search to Gmail, will be recorded on your account’s My Google Activity page. It’s useful if you frequently utilize Google applications in your web browser.
Checking the list of recently changed files may also identify illicit activity. On Windows, type “run” into the taskbar search box, choose the Execute program and then run the “recent” command to see a list of recently changed files. In macOS, it’s a little easier because you can just click the Recents link in Finder.
It’s also worth looking into individual applications to see what you can learn about recent actions. Image editing programs, word processors, and many other apps, for example, will contain a list of recently opened files that you may browse. Go to File, Open, and Recent in Excel for Windows, for example. Something similar will be found in other applications.
If someone other than you gains access to your computer, they will very probably be able to circumvent the security measures we’ve discussed. For example, most people are aware of the option of viewing the web in incognito or private mode so that it does not appear in your history. Keep this in mind, and use these tests as helpful hints rather than solid proof that your laptop has been accessed or not.
