How to tell if your smartphone is spying on you

While this can sometimes be convenient, helping marketers direct targeted advertising to our social media, search engines and news feeds, many people are creeped out and see it as an invasion of privacy.

According to digital privacy experts NordVPN, there are ways we can determine for sure if our phones are listening to us and ways to minimise the chances of it happening.

How to tell if your smartphone is listening to you

Experts say the best way to check if your phone is spying on you is to set up a trap.

Select a topic that wouldn’t normally be associated with you that you can confidently say you have never spoken about.

Don’t use your phone or any other device nearby to search for the topic.

Think of a list of keywords that could trigger a search engine.

Now discuss the topic out loud near your phone – try to do this for a few minutes and repeat it over a couple of days.

Now the trap has been set, if you start to see ads pop up on social media, underneath search engines or in your news feeds, this means the phone was listening.

Why does this ‘invasion of privacy’ happen?

When a person uses the virtual assistant on their smartphone, they agree to the terms and conditions of the service provider.

Digital privacy expert Daniel Markuson says you should review the permissions apps on your smartphone have been given on a regular basis.

“Once access is granted, the app can do whatever it wants with that data,” Mr Markuson said.

“So, build a routine to review your phone’s app permissions and think twice before agreeing to an app’s demands.”

He said some apps might try to access your microphone without any reason and this could allow agencies to spy on you in the background and collect ad-targeting data even when you don’t want them listening.

“Don’t share too much information with your phone. The less it knows, the better,” he said.

He says you should go through your smartphone’s settings and make sure that apps can access only the resources needed to do their job.

Clearing your activities once in a while and turning off the audio recording function can also help as Apple, Google, and other service providers allow the deletion of dictation history.

You may also want to install a virtual private network on your smart phone which will mask your IP address and encrypt traffic, thereby improving your privacy.