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.]
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’ve obviously never had an insecure or abusive or manipulative partner.
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. They’re to technologically inept.
Its not that hard to stalk someone if you’re on a Verizon Family Plan, see my other comment.
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.
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.
