I mean like people like parents/siblings/spouses/significant others/kids/roomates/housemates…
I mean, I have paranoia about other things too (such as germaphobia/mysophobia), but specifically on this issue of people snooping, is amongst one of my top fears, and I’m just curious if other have this similar fear/paranoia.
Like every time I wake up, I wonder if my parents or brother put some malware/spyware on my phone because they think its a funny prank or whatever.
Every time I enter my PIN for my phone, I always cover the screen before entering it in case my parents have cameras in the house. And even more so in public, I’d fear CCTV getting my PIN.
[No, I have not been diagnosed with schizophrenia, I don’t hallucinate or anything like that. (But I do have a diagnosis of depression.)]
[This is distinct from the common fears of government surveillance or whatever. That, strangely enough, I fear much less, since I’m just one in hundreds of millions of people that they would care about, so I’m not so worried about that.]
I don’t want fuel your fire, but here was my experience with my father. My dad had installed a keylogger on my macbook so he could see everything I was doing up until I moved out of his house. And because he was the account owner to my phone plan he was emailed every text I sent and received with friends. I wiped my macbook and erased my phone when I went to college to protect myself. He would take my phone every night and look through to make sure I wasn’t looking at illicit materials online, I was a closeted gay kid and I liked prn, sue me. My dad found evidence and took me to sex addicts anonymous because I was watching gay prn. I wasn’t allowed a phone or computer in my room, he took my Alexa out of my room. I really hope this doesn’t happen with other parents, or never gets that bad. I know this probably isn’t a common problem but it happened to me. Be strong and don’t let your parents see you cry, also if you have bad blood with siblings try to talk to them they might have advice or experienced the trauma you could be feeling.
No. I’m confident they aren’t capable of getting past the login on my devices and my file cabinet is locked.
In the past, i have because my mom would routinely snoop to see if I was still talking to the boy she forbade me to date (I was, and i got more clever about hiding it). The only way she let me keep a phone was if I didn’t put a pass code on it.
Fast forward to a couple of years after moving out of her house and in an emotionally abusive relationship. That dude ended up putting spyware on my phone (without my knowledge) because… well, idk, control i guess? I was messaging a close guy friend of mine, and my boyfriend fucking blew up at me, which is when I realized he had been spying on me. I wasn’t flirting with my guy friend or anything (we really didn’t have a relationship like that at all). he was just messaging me late at night because his step dad was abusive to him and I was helping him through that tough time. My boyfriend did not allow me to message another male after 9p.
Those had me paranoid, but can’t say I’m paranoid anymore. I’m married to a guy I trust, and he has my phone password info and I have his. I don’t snoop in his phone and I trust that he isn’t snooping in mine. Not like I have anything juicy in here, anyway.
But yeah, if you’re feeling paranoid without someone having previously violated your trust, it could be because you are doing things on your phone that you consider to be very private/embarrassing/nefarious? If so, that kinda makes sense I think. If that’s not the case, then respectfully, it might be good to see a mental health professional… life becomes a lot less stressful without worrying about shit like that.
I don’t have that fear, no. But I’ve also never really had my privacy invaded in ways I didn’t officially condone, either. I bet if that happened even once I’d be a bit more anxious about it.
Nop, and nor do my friends. If we really wanted each other’s info we just ask.
I had a fear that a live-in girlfriend had installed spy software on my phone.
I never did find out whether she had. But I did uncover a bunch of lies on her part, and generally speaking discovered that it was not wise to trust her with my heart and sanity.
It’s likely that my worry about her possibly having hacked my phone was a result of my subconscious noticing things my conscious mind didn’t until later.
On the other hand, at the time I had a tendency toward paranoia.
Looking back, the paranoia could have been a sort of “mental inflammatory response” to actual sketchy shit going on, even if the specific notions my paranoia presented weren’t, themselves, true.
At a deeper level, my breaking up with her was part of an ongoing process of integrating my own mind in a way that led to a lot less second guessing. For example before this transformation I never trusted my gut. I’d get a gut read, but then I’d have to justify it with demonstrable evidence before I acted on it.
A psychologist, who actually helped me find the courage to break up with her and supported me in that process, told me during one session “You need to develop an alliance with your subconscious mind”.
In response to his saying that, I remember sitting on a bus as it went along a loop route, just in a sort of eyes-half-closed almost trance, as I basically tried to strike an alliance with my subconscious mind.
The deal, that was formed in an actual sort of conversation with my subconscious, was this:
- My subconscious serves me by providing me with motivation and mental clarity to get things done
- I serve my subconscious by listening when it tells me it needs something; ie I trust it as a solid source of information
During that bus ride, I suddenly felt a sense of wholeness and fullness. My paranoia decreased enormously. I felt like it was time to get moving, so I stepped off at the next stop.
Then suddenly realized I was near her work. And also suddenly realized I had the courage to break up with her. She wasn’t at work, but rather at a nearby gym. I went to the gym and broke up with her.
Since then, it has been much easier to make decisions. My life feels richer. I don’t have any qualms about rejecting a person or situation just because it doesn’t feel right; no more articulable justification is needed.
I can now say “nah, no thanks” to things without needing an argument about why beyond “I just don’t like it”, or “I don’t feel like it”.
My advice, if you want advice, would be to consider this concept of making an alliance with your subconscious. Make sure you two are on the same team. Be willing to act on its information, and ask it to help you meet your goals.
Maybe I’m fucking nuts to see things that way, but I really felt like I was communing with another being during that bus ride. That was six years ago. Now it doesn’t feel like a separate being. I’m a lot more in touch with my feelings. It feels like an integrated whole, because we have a lot of practice acting as a team now.
But at the time, I was cut off and separated from that part of myself. The first step toward integration was establishing a quid pro quo based on mutual respect. And a commitment not just to demand help from it, but also to provide help to it. I (the conscious part) promised to it that I would uphold my side of the bargain, and I’ve stuck to it.
I hope this helps. I know it sounds really weird.
No. But sometimes I wonder if anyone around me can read my thoughts and I become super self-conscious of what I’m thinking.
The buddhists say something like “watch your thoughts because thoughts become actions”.
Could be some part of you is using “other people can tell what I’m thinking” to represent the reality that “the world will judge* me based on [what I do]*”
Where these terms can be expanded to:
- “judge” = provide feedback in terms of situations that develop around me, which are either pleasant or unpleasant for me
- “what I do” = The overall set of “karma”, ie mental patterns that consistently manifest in behavioral patterns
So even if individuals around you can’t hear each of your individual thoughts, your mind uses that scenario to represent the reality that the contents of your head will come out, and the world of people will respond when it does.
This is probably why we have such a tendency to believe in “God”, which is an omniscient person. Just like the hippocampus which evolved for navigating physical environments also serves as a planning center for navigating abstract landscapes of possibility, it could be whatever mechanisms evolved to handle other individuals who will modulate their relationship to us based on how we treat them, to also model the way that certain behaviors will eventually lead to certain types of response from physical reality and the social world.
It already happened to me.
My old phone was on a Verizon family plan, with my family.
Problem: My dad is a QAnon nut who builds ghost guns in his garage.
Mom is a pushover, brain broken from a childhood of drug abuse.
Brother dropped out of high school to do drugs at raves, very emotionally unstable, 3 different times in my life I’ve had to drop everything to save him from becoming homeless and/or dying of an overdose, all occuring either when i was getting two bachelors degress simultaneously at the best uni in the state, or right after I graduated.
I up and left one day after getting sick of their bullshit. Just completely ghosted them after I couldn’t stand their bullshit anymore.
For the next two weeks, my brother keeps somehow showing up every 2 days, despite me being in locations I’ve never, ever been to before.
He is always in his car, slow crawling, looking at his phone, looking around, then panicking when he realizes I am staring at him, driving off.
Hrm. Turn off GPS? Nope, brother keeps showing up.
Call up Verizon explain what is going on, they say oh you’re not an authorized plan admin.
Huh. I was 2 weeks ago.
Root the phone, properly de google it.
My phone plan is then immediately cancelled, within a minute of booting up the phone again.
Call up Verizon (on a shitty grocery store sim card). Oh yeah your phone number was disabled by the admin, you have to contact them to enable it, no you cannot transfer the number to your own new plan, that’s all we can tell you.
… My family de listed me as an admin from the phone plan, enabled parental controls to literally stalk me, then disabled and froze my number/line after i uninstalled their ability to do that.
… This also had the fun side effect of locking me out of every single account that that I was using that number for with 2FA, so, no more banking for me!
If you think I’m nuts: This is just an optional feature in a Verizon family plan.
Works to approximate location even if the target phone doesn’t have the app installed on it.
https://www.verizon.com/support/verizon-family-faqs/
What Verizon Family features are available without downloading the Verizon Family Companion app on my dependent’s device?
Certain features are only available if the Companion app is installed on your dependent’s smartphone and paired with the Verizon Family app on your device.*
Without pairing, you can: View Verizon cellular call and text activity† Set time restrictions on texts, calls and data usage** Set data limits** Set text and call limits† Get access to the device's network location Note: Network location accuracy may vary up to a few miles.Obviously if you are stationary, and connected to a WiFi network with a known location, like a motel, or a library, or a coffee shop, you can narrow the pure cell tower triangulation error range, by a lot.
So uh yeah, if you have a Verizon family plan, you can easily be under realtime surveillance by whoever is the actual plan master.
You just made OP shit his pants.
My SO knows my passwords and I hers. I don’t have anything to hide so I never have to panic if she wants my devices (for ordering food etc).
I can see why this is a contentious topic for either paranoids or people who aren’t being truthful to their partners.
You can want or need privacy without it being nefarious in some way
Absolutely! I’m 100% for privacy and security where necessary. My point was just that if you have a partner you can trust, it removes the necessity for secrecy which in turn will do wonders for your ease of mind.
You’ve obviously never had an insecure or abusive or manipulative partner.
I have, but luckily am not together with them anymore. You deserve better than someone who second guesses your every move.
Locking your phone, setting it to auto lock, using biometrics so the pin is hard to steal, etc are all perfectly reasonable things to do. You have a right to privacy
If you have abusive and technically skilled family who have been caught spying on you with technical means, worrying they might do it again would be reasonable
If you constantly worry about something that you have no tangible reason to consider a credible threat, it might be some other issue, from anxiety to OCD. Perhaps try to talk to a professional?
On biometrics btw: they’re worse against police who could force you to unlock the phone, but if your worry is someone seeing your pin, biometrics fixes that
You can restart the phone or activate lockdown mode before going to bed and be safe from someone sneaking your finger print
This won’t help you on the tech stuff but one technique I use at work is to set “traps”. Very simple things like placing a tiny piece of paper in a place where it will fall if a door is opened. A piece of tape or thread works too. I’ll take a picture for reference
Do you take the picture because you don’t trust your memory?
I’ll remind you that these traps depend on someone being less inclined toward perceiving that clandestine game than you. Which, if they’re sneaking in to do something wrong, is probably false.
The only way that trap would work is if they’re underestimating your cunning.
I can see how taking a reference photo might detect if they replace the paper sloppily. But if I were them, sneaking in to do something dastardly to your stuff, I would take my own reference photo before opening that door, to evaluate my replacement of the paper and ensure it matches the original state.
Controlling parents in your life?
Not “controlling” but they are emotionally abusive. Especially when I was younger, but even now they are still a bit emotionally abusive. They constantly accuse me of “faking” my depression, while simultaneously want to do involuntary hospitalization. Their emotional abuse is probably why I even have depression in the first place. (I suspect my mother to be bipolar, one minute shes fine and acts nice, 5 minutes later she gets mad for small issues, even for problems like her shitty coworkers or other issues not related to me.)
Moving out is not really an option, the economy is shit (not to mention, the incoming tarriffs with the next administration), and with depression, such a sudden change in life would definitely make me unable to hold a job. I would end up dead by suicide if I attempted moving out. I tried living at college apartments when my parents funded my college, but I had anxiety all the time, and couldn’t deal with it. Actually moving out permanently would feel much worse. Ironically, I have separation anxiety even tho my parents are emotionally abusive 😓
Not to mention, living alone also has another challenge, in case of home invasion, I wouldn’t be able to defend myself (cops are useless btw, they take at least half an hour to respond, not an option), if I got a gun, I risk getting depressed one night and ending myself, so a gun isn’t an option either.
Basically a lot of issues with moving out, not good for depression.
Hey there! I can relate a lot to what you’re saying here. I’ve often felt trapped in a bad place because all of the alternatives seem worse. I had a fairly traumatic upbringing (some emotional abuse, a little bit of physical and sexual abuse, lots of emotional neglect), and I also suffered from a fear that the people around me would mess with me and invade my privacy.
For me, the need for privacy came from a place of deep self-loathing fueled by a shitton of criticism from my dad (why can’t you do anything right/think the right things/just focus on something). I didn’t want others to see who I really was, so I went to extreme lengths to hide it from the world. Everything was locked, and I used to write my thoughts down in an intentionally opaque way to try to mask what I really felt.
I dunno if that matches your lived experience at all, but one of the consequences of all this was that I did this thing called catastrophizing. I’d become totally crippled and stuck and lost because I’d only see the worst possible outcome in every decision I might make. It’s very common for people who have suffered emotional abuse (especially for those who have their judgement, sanity, or morality criticized by their parents). I could absolutely be off base here, but like, I started feeling those feelings of doom and danger as I was reading your comment. I am absolutely not trying to minimize your situation. Catastrophizing is a horrible thing to battle with, and it takes actual traumatic catastrophies before you begin to catastrophize.
w.r.t. home invasions and safety, it might be good to reevaluate that. Is it really so dangerous that you would need to defend yourself? Like, maybe that’s the case! I grew up in a pretty safe place, so I lack the proper context to understand that fear. I do know that violent crime is very uncommon. Your situation may seem hopeless and you may feel trapped. I’ve felt that way. Just know that while some choices have risks and may feel dangerous, things don’t always go that way. You deserve to feel safe and secure.
No, I know my girlfriend doesn’t look at my stuff but I couldn’t care less if she did. The worst things i have on my devices are pirated games and movies and she can enjoy those all she wants
I think this comes from inside, if you are the type of person that snoops into other people’s stuff you would probably also be afraid others do the same. I couldn’t care less what my girl does on her phone (she would let me if I wanted to though) so I don’t look.
This reminds me of OCD, tbh. OCD works like this: The Obsession: it’s a persistent thought that you can’t stop thinking about. That you ruminate over and that causes you anxiety. Such as, “someone poisoned my food” or “I left the stove on at home” or “my actions will cause a butterfly effect that will lead to somebody’s death” or “someone could have bled on that sink handle and they had HIV”. Some thought like that, that is sometimes completely illogical. But you cannot argue with how illogical it is, because you feel anxious regardless. Your fear exists separately from what you know is logical.
The there is the Compulsion: you try to alleviate this anxiety/fear by doing an action. Whether it’s praying, or counting, or whatever. If you fear poison, you might only eat in tiny bites. If you fear you left your stove on, you might check it 10 times in a row. If you fear the butterfly effect, you might wait to walk out of your door until it “feels right”. Doesn’t matter what it is. It’s often not logical either. But it makes the anxiety go away.
The the D in OCD is Disorder, because it negatively impacts your life and wastes your time in a significant way. Like, everyone might worry that they left the stove on once in a while, but not everyone is consistently going back to check it 10 times. Or 30 times. Etc.
The reason this sounds like it could possibly be OCD to me is because you have the Obsession that you are being spied on. And you presumably do Compulsions like covering your phone or checking for malware like, all the time. In order to alleviate the anxiety of the Obsession.
So. Not schizophrenia imo. You clearly know it’s not logical of you to be so paranoid. But perhaps OCD. Idk! Only you and a doctor can figure that out.
If I were you I’d ask myself if there are any other things you do that follow this pattern. And that negatively affect your life/mood. People with OCD usually have multiple obsessions and compulsions in response to those obsessions. And these can be observed to change over time too. Think about your childhood. Think about your present.
No.
This isn’t OCD at all.
They’re not describing a need to perform specific tasks in a specific way or number of times which they feel anxiety if they do not do.
They do not describe any rituals that they feel they need to do to alleviate anxiety.
They don’t describe anything like needing to check if a door is locked 10 times or checking if an oven is off 10 times, you’re just making that up from nowhere.
…
They’re describing a generalized, heightened sense of anxiety about the security of their digital devices from people they are in close proximity to, as well as just a general fear of being spies on by cameras.
As well as germophobia and mysophobia.
None of these fears are entirely factually unfounded or without merit, germs can harm you, digital devices can be covertly spied on.
They then go on to detail how their family is emotionally manipulative and abusive.
…
… IM(unprofessional)O, this is CPTSD.
That will manifest as heightened general paranoia as well as any number of specific paranoias… because it makes sense to be extra worried about trusting things when you are constantly surrounded by duplicitous assholes who lie about things constantly, and cause you to fear things like footsteps and knocks on doors.
If your baseline is: I am normally lied to, spied on, have my words twisted against me by people I am forced to be around constantly, you’d likely become generally untrusting and paranoid too.
Germo/Mysophobia could come from being stuck in an unclean environment where people rarely or never excersize sufficient hygeine and cleaning, don’t throw out moldy food, etc, which has gotten this person sick multiple times, so the compensation is to have a heightened awareness and aversion to potential sources of sickness.
I am not saying it is OCD, I am saying it could be OCD. Especially if they left details out of their post, which they may well have. The things I made up are examples of real symptoms someone might have. I am not saying they have any of the symptoms. The only reason I made this post with a detailed explanation of how OCD works, is because the majority of people think OCD is about washing your hands and being clean, because the contamination obsession is one of the most common obsessions. Therefore, if this person did have OCD, my post is a good introduction to realize it. If they do not, they will not relate to anything I wrote, and in that case they can ignore my post.
You may well be right about the CPTSD as well. They should look into it too.
I don’t feel comfortable diagnosing them based on one post they made lol. That’s not what I was attempting to do. I am also uncomfortable with you definitely saying “this isn’t OCD at all”… we cannot tell what this person is truly experiencing from one post alone. So giving potentially useful knowledge to them, such as a more accurate rundown of how OCD works, is only logical imo. It’s better to have information than to not have it.
My sibling was initially walking around with undiagnosed OCD for years because of the hand washing stereotype. And the neat freak stereotype. “I can’t have OCD! My room is a mess!” type of deal. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. That’s all.
I know people that do snoop. I had a friend that once asked me if I go through people’s medicine cabinets when I go to their bathroom or through all of their things when I house sit. I gave a solid no because not only do I respect people’s privacy, I don’t even want to know what’s in there. That’s too much knowledge for my limited brain space. She responded that she does every time she has a chance. People be going thru your shit, and it’s the gross ones.
