How do you know if your phone is hacked or being monitored it's a Motorola power g2022

[Android Central Question]

If it is hacked how do I reverse the action and what can I do to prevent that type of thing happenig

 

[Mr Bojangles1]

It's highly unlikely that your phone itself would be hacked. It would most likely be through one of your accounts. Google has it's hands in a lot of places on your phone so it would most likely be your Google account if anything. Go to your Google account and go through all the different tabs and look for anything that doesn't belong. Check connected apps, devices logged in, share location settings, and recovery info like backup email/phone number. And then change your password and set up recovery info so that you can recover your account if it's ever taken over. Phone number and an email account you don't use much would work.

If it's due to a malicious app then you might be able to spot it by looking at data/wifi usage and battery usage. There is usually a lot of background activity. I would download malwarebytes and run a scan. But the best antivirus is going to be yourself. Don't open weird links that you don't know what they are, don't download apps from outside of the play store and be mindful of where your phone is with shady people around. Android is pretty secure if you follow that. You can't install apps from outside of the play store without changing the setting "install from unknown sources" so you would know if you downloaded a shady app yourself. There are times where apps with viruses sneak past Google play, but a lot of the time you will notice strange things happening with your phone as it works in the background. If Malwarebytes doesn't find anything and you still have suspicions then you can put your phone in safe mode and remove recently installed apps and apps you don't really use very much.

If your phone is actually hacked then there would not be much you could do about it besides a factory reset because hacking one remotely isnt easy and would take someone very skilled. A lot of hacks are done through social engineering. Someone trying to trick you into downloading something or giving up your info without knowing. Chances are it's either nothing or it's an account that's compromised.

 

[mustang7757]

We have a guideline here

https://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=966023


I'll leave a Link to register so you can communicate here as a guest account you can only post questions but can't reply

https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/409154-join-android-central-community.html

 

[Sean Lowery]

Well what if you were aware, that for some reason, that you were unaware of. That you were under investigation by the NSA? And knew this because your best friend's family member works for them in the "Infosec/cyber security" realm?

1. Asides from doing a factory reset on your mobile device, which essentially does nothing. Especially if they're using a rat, have all your transmissions redirected initially so that everything you try to do. Is going to a honey pot or something that's filtering for keywords first, or however nsa does there stupid surveillance tactics. How would I be able to bypass their actions or bulletproof (on my side @ "physical terminal-mobile device" level? There's gotta be something one can do, even at cli levels?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! I think it's far too early to be going to those lengths. We would need more details from the OP (who never registered to respond), since the vast majority of "hacking" worries have very simple explanations that don't have anything to do with malicious intent.

 

[Sean Lowery]

What details would be needed? Whos the OP?

And what if I'd confirmation of said nsa literally at the end of a url. From a conversation, just last night I'd thought I was having with Verizon wireless support via chat?

I would really love a simple explanation, that's got zero to do with malicious intent...

All I've got right now is constant craziness pertaing to the most unconceivable experiences via only 2 mobile devices (my gf and Is'). And a unfamiliar connection in my Google account device management connection,that's labeled as various projects which I can't find reference to anywhere online. (Like "project-434358444477")?

 

[belodion]

Whos the OP?

….(Like "project-434358444477")?

OP means original poster, the person who asked the original question.

….See this: https://forums.androidcentral.com/a...od-connected-project-442024615628-what-2.html

 

[B. Diddy]

What details would be needed? Whos the OP?

And what if I'd confirmation of said nsa literally at the end of a url. From a conversation, just last night I'd thought I was having with Verizon wireless support via chat?

I would really love a simple explanation, that's got zero to do with malicious intent...

All I've got right now is constant craziness pertaing to the most unconceivable experiences via only 2 mobile devices (my gf and Is'). And a unfamiliar connection in my Google account device management connection,that's labeled as various projects which I can't find reference to anywhere online. (Like "project-434358444477")?

I thought you were referring to the situation of the original poster of this thread.

There are a lot of threads about "Project-[long string of numbers]". I'm not a developer, so I can't be sure, but it's almost certainly related to some normal app.

Review the guide that mustang7757 shared back in August, and also see this: [GUIDE] How To Avoid Malware - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com

 

[VidJunky]

What details would be needed? Whos the OP?

And what if I'd confirmation of said nsa literally at the end of a url. From a conversation, just last night I'd thought I was having with Verizon wireless support via chat?

I would really love a simple explanation, that's got zero to do with malicious intent...

All I've got right now is constant craziness pertaing to the most unconceivable experiences via only 2 mobile devices (my gf and Is'). And a unfamiliar connection in my Google account device management connection,that's labeled as various projects which I can't find reference to anywhere online. (Like "project-434358444477")?

We see tons of false positive evidence for being hacked and it is almost all non-malicious. The issues stem from people not taking care of their device health, surfing unsecured web pages and ending up with ads, looking at their Google activity and not knowing what they are looking at and so many other reasons there is no way to possibly name them all. It's a fact that if you go looking for something and suspect everything you're going to find something.

Being hacked is such a running theme we have a thread just about people's feeling of being hacked... https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/966023-i-ve-been-hacked.html#post6908062

I have yet to encounter a single person on this site with a legit claim to being hacked. While I am familiar with your description of the man in the middle hack used by the intelligence agencies, those attacks are usually targeted and while they may net a lot of normies they usually catch and release those they aren't focused on. At some point we have to consider a few glaring things. Why would I be targeted for hacking, am I rich, famous, powerful? If the answer to all of those is no, then why? What is their gain from hacking me? Personal information? Probably not, besides I give that away for free everyday to every website I visit, ever app I open, every web search I perform, every time I log in to social media. Could we be any more of an open book? Next is the how? How was I attacked? Well they didn't install anything on your phone, because installations have to be initiated and agreed to by the user. Most of us would notice if some strange app requested installation. I think it also fair to say that if I let someone control my device for something like an hour, while also being out of our site, they wouldn't do it right in front of us, we'd remember that too. Oh they did it remotely. Besides the time and cost to create an exploit that works on multiple types of device, because you never know what someone is carrying, and can be deployed from a distance, what device do they use for that, then doing all of this without being detected, yeah that is the stuff of movies and TV. Yeah that's not happening to normies in real life. My absolute favorite though is that they went through all of this trouble to hack me but left me all of these clues that they were here. Ads popping up, apps closing unexpectedly, weird names in my activity log, restarting my phone... I mean I would never try to resolve any of these issues, it is obviously a hack.

Hey best wishes. I'll give the same advice that is mentioned each time one of these posts popup about being hacked, if anyone truly believe they have been hacked go to your local law enforcement agency and explain it to them. Hacking is a federal offence, remote hacking also violates some FCC rules I'm sure. If they won't do anything, that's because they are in on it too and you're probably under investigation.

 

[Mooncatt]

And what if I'd confirmation of said nsa literally at the end of a url.

Trust me, the NSA isn't going to make it that obvious they are tracking you. And if you are on their radar for some reason, you are likely someone that wouldn't be fooled by such things. But if you want to prevent any such tracking, then you should go completely off grid, if not leave the country. Even then they may still be able to find you if they really wanted.