Is an app on my phone watching me? How to check, calmly

Before you change anything

Five ways an app gets onto a phone without you knowing

Monitoring apps are usually installed by someone who had the phone unlocked for a few minutes. The common situations are ordinary ones:

1. Someone who sometimes has your phone. A partner, a family member, a flatmate, a colleague who knows or has watched your PIN.
2. Someone who gave you the phone. A gift can arrive already set up, with accounts and apps you did not choose.
3. A repair shop. Most repairs need the phone unlocked. Most shops are honest. You still cannot see what happened on the bench.
4. The previous owner of a used phone. If the phone was not factory reset, their apps, accounts and settings are still there.
5. Someone in the future. A check today does not cover tomorrow, which is why Applore keeps checking and reminds you if something serious appears.

None of these means something was installed. They are the reasons to look.

What Applore checks

Applore’s Suspicious App Checker is a free check for known stalkerware and suspicious apps. It looks at every installed app in several ways:

• Known stalkerware and harmful apps. Each app’s package name, signing certificate and file fingerprint are compared with a reviewed, signed threat list built from public research by Echap, the Mobile Verification Toolkit project and ESET. Applore checks for a new list about once a day. Harmful apps are never matched by name alone, so a genuine app is not flagged for sharing a name with a fake one. [2]
• What Google Play Protect reports. If Play Protect is on, apps it reports as harmful are listed, with Play Protect named as the source. [3]
• Warning signs no list covers yet. An app installed from outside an app store that hides its icon, or that has accessibility, notification or device admin access, is flagged for your review. So is a copy of a popular app that is not signed by the real publisher, and an app from outside a store that can use several of microphone, camera, location, messages, call history and contacts while set to keep running.
• Monitoring apps, labelled fairly. Family and parental apps from an app store are shown as monitoring apps, not spyware.

Each flagged app gets a level and a plain-language explanation of what it can see or do, where it came from and when it was installed:

Known monitoring appHighWorth a lookNot flagged

How to run the check

Applore keeps checking after that: when you open it, when apps are added or changed, and a daily pass over every app. If it finds a Known monitoring app or High result, it reminds you after about an hour, later that day, the next day, then daily for a week and weekly after that. The reminder never names the app. On the lock screen it shows only Applore. When the phone is unlocked it reads Security check needed: an app may be monitoring this phone, without saying which one. Swiping it away does not clear the finding.

Built for people who may be watched

• The safety screens show no ads, in Applore Free and Applore Pro.
• Safety screens are hidden from screenshots and from the Recents preview.
• Quick exit closes Applore in one tap and removes it from Recents.
• Talk to someone lists support services for India, the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries. Nothing is dialled until you choose.
• The safe removal steps let you save a report on your phone first, as a PDF and a data file, and share it only through Android’s share sheet if you choose. Keeping a record.
• The check runs on your phone. The list of installed apps is not sent to analytics or advertisers.

Lock what is private, too

If the worry is that someone can pick up your phone, the second half of the problem is what they can open. Applore’s free App Lock keeps the apps you choose behind a PIN, pattern or fingerprint, with Lock Groups you can switch on and off. Password Vault keeps your passwords behind the same PIN with autofill. In Applore Pro, Vault Gallery and Private Camera keep photos and videos in a private vault that opens only inside Applore. App Lock · Password Vault · Vault Gallery.

What Applore cannot do

Applore also cannot see spying that happens outside apps: a shared account, call or message forwarding set up with a carrier, or an implant in the phone’s system software. Safety Check points you to the account settings, but it cannot inspect them for you. For the full explanation, read how detection works and what Applore will and won’t do.

Get support

If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency number. For everything else, support hotlines lists where to start, and the Coalition Against Stalkerware publishes advice for survivors. [1]