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.]
No, but I would invite the idea. If someone would be THAT interested, I would gladly show them all the fckd up shit I look up and create. If they did it w/o my consent, lol for them.
Rule 12 applies in all aspects of life; not just on the Internet.
If I ever paid for a will, I have this idea that I would want all the contents of my devices, and my search history published, and a QR code put on my gravestone. But I would imagine it wouldn’t be any more unique than most others.
No, but I would invite the idea. If someone would be THAT interested, I would gladly show them all the fckd up shit I look up and create. If they did it w/o my consent, lol for them.
I think this is an important part of it. There’s a level of discretion that is about polite social boundaries. If someone walks into my room when I’m naked I’d cover myself up, but it’s as much because I assume they don’t want to see me naked as it is to ‘protect my modesty’. I hide NSFW content on my devices because I don’t want a friend or family member to accidentally come across something. If they really want to know about stuff like that and poke about, then sure, go for it weirdo. I think the act of prying is more embarrassing than the ‘private’ stuff it uncovers.
I have to quick blur NSFW on here when I go in public, so as to not have awkward glaring duels with strangers such as the ones that might be behind me on the bus. But in a casual setting where I have a social opportunity I just leave the Lemmy nudes on my feed unobscured. Someone goes, wtf you lookin’’ at and I am like: I don’t dictate nor direct the feeds, they direct me lol.
When I was a teen in summer camp, the girls once spied on us in the shower. We knew but they didn’t know we knew, so we put on a show. We teased them about it more than they did that year. Lol. It’s usually the other way around in movies.
My parents regularly did go through my things when I was living with them, and I did get in trouble for the most random things they found. Not a great feeling, but at least they don’t have a spare key for my current apartment.
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.
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.
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.
You just made OP shit his pants.
I used to have that fear when I was a kid living with family and my mom in particular was very nosey. I understand a nosey parent to make sure you kid isn’t into drugs, but she went way beyond that. She was also paranoid so she was convinced I was doing fucked up shit without any evidence.
It took me a long time to get over that. I did have a friend who was rooting through a couple of my things and we stopped being friends not long after. As far as I know, no one else has gone through my stuff.
The only time I’ve ever gone through anybody else’s stuff is to look through my mom’s drawers for things she stole and my ex’s phone after many years and other evidence that he was fucking around behind my back and I wanted to know for sure that he was. I hated doing it in both cases because I didn’t like it being done to me but felt that was the last option I had.
So yeah, with psycho family, you have every right to feel that way. Just know that isn’t normal and that most people won’t do that.
Oh I am certain he found my dildos, but he’s probably staying away from my browser history.
Nah. I use a password lock instead of biometrics even if my family actually cares enough to want to.
Can’t say that I do.
Occasionally (when looking at something I’d rather they didn’t know about), the thought that my partner might have installed something that monitors all network traffic and what websites are accessed crosses my mind… But I don’t seriously worry about that, because I trust the people I live with, and they wouldn’t do things like that.
Maybe your family are less respectful, or think messing with people is funny? But it also might be an expression of social anxiety. It’s a pretty typical symptom of anxiety to worry that other people are thinking about us, talking about us, noticing tiny things (when most of the time people don’t actually care that much). So worrying about spyware could be a modern version of that?
I wonder if there are some simple tech soloutions you could implement? Even if you simply get a cloud based log of every time your phone is unlocked, you’d be able to spot unauthorised access while you’re sleeping. But the real answer is probably working on your sense of security and trust. Do you really have reasons not to trust these people? And if they did find out what you did on your phone, would it really matter? As some of the other commentators have said, if you’re secure in yourself, then your online activity becoming public shouldn’t worry you.
I’m not, but this is one of the reasons I never wanted to move for college, and also part of why I don’t want ever to live at a rented place. I don’t believe “they are out to get me”, I don’t believe I would be targeted, but I do believe that it can happen in the wrong environment, and you never know. I’m also aware that I wouldn’t necessarily notice it, or if I did I wouldn’t know what was compomised.
I don’t normally think about this at home where my family lives, but sometimes I remember that they don’t always lock the door, or that sometimes we have guests.
if I had a housemate I would expect it to be a similar case, except if that was not really a choice. I would still put a simple password on my computer, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to set up disk encryption just for thatLike 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.
there’s something unhealthy in that. either that you think about such things, or that there is a reason you do so in your environment
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.
It’s good to be cautious to having cctv see your passwords in public. but at home, again it depends but shouldn’t be a concern.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.