Thinking otherwise is naïvety. Nothing is truly private and you should never do or say anything you wouldn’t want to be known to have done and said.

Unless your spouse or family members happen to be NSA agents or feds of some kind this is baseless paranoia. If you want to be concerned over genuine privacy concerns to feed your fears look into PRISM or nine-eyes, not your own family installing RATS on your system for … reasons.

Its not impossible there are obviously examples of snooping usually cause of spouses and fear of cheating. In your case though, are the logistics and reasoning there to support the concern?.

The thing about extremely anxious and paranoid people is this: they get so caught up in their what-if nightmare cassarole fantasies that they forget the basic but important questions like “but why? for what reason? Realistically how could they do it without notice, and whats the time investment or monetary cost to keep it up? What are the actual chances if I were to spitball a statistical probability of this event actually playing out, 1/10,000? What useful information could they actually get from this? Am I or my information REALLY that special? Do I think anyone in my personal life really wants to know about my shameful sexual kinks or dirty secrets? Can a person who barely knows how to open a web browser ot read emails really competent enough to comprise my system?” These kinds of reality-check thoughts don’t occur to extremely paranoid people while on a fear-spiraling episode.

You felt the need to cover your ass saying you weren’t schitzo, so you probably already know these kind of thoughts are indicative of potential serious misfirings in your neural network. Something might not be right in your ape brain. If your fears and paranoia become even worse to the point you think your own family has been replaced by clones or is trying to poison you, please seek help.

Finally, if you truly do have concerns about snooping that come from a place of legitimacy, theres always things you can do to shore up your security. cryptography encryption and physical pass keys for your digital information, black tape over your cameras when not in use, soundproofing foam over microphones if you can’t rip them out or physically kill them. Keep your phone in a diy Faraday cage box made layered with aluminum foil. Hell get some bug detectors and sweep the whole place. You aren’t helpless. Use your brain and take control of your environment one step at a time.

Yeah, family only saw me as that stupid fucking puzzle piece and not an actual human being so they’d look through everything and assume that stupid puzzle piece was the reason why and share it with ABA therapists, or literal professional child abusers, to make me no longer do the thing. Actual humans can watch youtube poop and meme videos because they’re funny, but I only did because that stupid puzzle piece made me. Actual humans can read and write fanfiction, make games, romhack, and have hobbies, but when I did them, the same stupid ass puzzle piece that made me too stupid and unfit for actual human society made me so talented and so smart, and what used to be a hobby becomes some big stupid “talent” that I’m forced to overwork myself on to prove that puzzle pieces are just as bright as people! So inspirational! Ugh. But when I quit all my hobbies, the same puzzle piece that made me do them made me quit.

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.

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.