How to Know if Someone is Listening on Your Phone

In the days of landlines, if you heard someone on the line while you were talking on the phone, you assumed someone had picked up an extension. But in the cellphone era, strange noises in the background of your calls are a bad sign. If you've heard those sounds and thought, "Someone is listening to my calls," you could be right. It could be a sign that someone has installed a phone tapping app on your phone.

It's important to identify exactly what's giving you the idea that someone is listening to your calls. In addition to hearing clicks or beeps, signs you're being tapped can include rapid battery drainage, strange texts and messages, performance issues and ads appearing at strange times. But if you really want to be sure, you can install a phone tap detector on your phone. This type of app will scan your phone for signs you're being spied on.

If you're worried the government has placed a phone-tapping app on your phone, those fears will likely be unfounded. Tapping a phone requires a warrant, at which point the phone carrier will provide information on calls and, when requested, the actual content of those calls. The average phone tap detector will likely capture instances of phone tapping through malware, which can happen as a result of downloading an app. The app installs spyware on your phone, which can capture passwords, monitor your activity, take over your phone's camera or listen in on your calls. If you suspect you have this type of spyware on your phone, you'll need to remove it.

Whenever it's confirmed that someone is, indeed, listening to your calls, you need to repair the problem immediately. Chances are you've downloaded a phone-tapping app through spyware attached to a download. That means the spyware will reside on your phone until you do something about it. A factory reset of your phone is the best way to clear things out so you'll be able to sleep at night. Once your phone has been completely refreshed, be very cautious about the apps you download to avoid encountering the same problem again a few months down the line. If the government has a warrant to gather the content of your calls, though, there's nothing you can do. In that case, you probably have bigger problems than someone eavesdropping on your phone calls.