EVERY day, you carry around a microphone with you on your smartphone. You might even have them dotted around your home in smart speakers and screens.
The good news is that it’s unlikely anyone is actually listening to you through your microphone. But it’s essential that you know how to check for the signs that someone is spying, where to find recordings you didn’t know about, and the exact settings to block microphone snooping.
5
ON YOUR SMARTPHONE
Let’s start with your smartphone, which obviously has microphones built in. After all, you need to make phone calls somehow.
If someone wanted to spy through the microphone on your phone, there’s really only one way to do it.
It would involve them installing some kind of rogue app on your device.
Typically, it wouldn’t show up as a “spying” app. It would be likely disguised as something else, so you wouldn’t notice that it was on your phone.
Maybe it would show up as a calculator or an app that converts documents to PDFs. Something totally boring that you’d never look twice at.
A snooper could plant that on your phone in several ways.
One way is that someone you know – or that could reasonably sneak a go on your phone – has installed it there.
The stalker would do this when you weren’t looking, and then use the app to listen in.
A second option is that you accidentally downloaded a spy app.
You might have been trying to install a proper app from an app store, and it just turned out to be unsafe.
Or maybe you clicked a dodgy link in a text or email, and then wound up installing spyware that way.
Thankfully, it’s extremely easy to check if your microphone is being used. You can even check if it’s been used in the past.
But before you get to that, do a quick check of your phone’s App Library.
Go through all of the apps and make sure you recognise them all.
5
If there’s anything on your list of apps that you don’t recognise and never use, it’s probably worth deleting it. It’s better to be safe than sorry.
Anyway, back to checking on your microphone.
If you ever see an orange dot at the top of your iPhone screen, that means your microphone is in active use.
And if you drag down from the top of your screen to bring up the Control Centre, you can see what’s in use – and tap it to find out which app is currently using your microphone.
Android phones have a similar feature that should be very obvious: you’ll see a microphone on the status bar. Tap it to find out more.
Of course, you might not always notice this on your iPhone or Android.
So what you’ll want to do is unlock your iPhone, then go to Settings > Privacy & Security and then turn on the App Privacy Report.
Once it’s on, it’ll start keeping a log of every time an app ever accesses something sensitive, like your microphone, camera, or data.
APPLE’S APP PRIVACY REPORT EXPLAINED
This is a seriously handy iPhone feature…
If your iPhone is running iOS 15.2 or later (it probably is but go to Settings > General > Software Update to check) then you can access the App Privacy Report.
Go into Settings > Privacy & Security > App Privacy Report and turn it on.
Once it’s on, it’ll begin logging how often apps access your data.
That includes your camera, but also your microphone, location, health data, and more.
You can see all the apps accessing this data, as well as exact timestamps for when they did it.
So you can very easily check on an app to see if it’s behaving oddly.
Uber needs your location and Instagram will likely use your camera – but does that random calculator app need access to your microphone? And why is it activating 50 times a day?
If you’re worried about an app, you can then go into Settings > Privacy & Security and shut off sensor or data access.
Or consider deleting the suspicious app entirely.
But a word of warning: the App Privacy Report only logs behaviour after it’s been switched on. So you won’t see any info from before you activated the feature.
And if you turn it off and then switch it on again, you’ll be starting from scratch.
Picture Credit: Apple / The Sun
So you can then go into the report and see every time an app has accessed your microphone.
Android phones also have app privacy reporting if you want to check up on dodgy apps.
If you see a strange app constantly tapping into your microphone, that’s a red flag. Delete it right away.
You can also go into Settings > Privacy & Security, and then deny microphone access for any app you like. You can see every app that has microphone access, so it’s a great way to review your privacy.
There is also a bizarre mistake that you might make that lets people hear audio you didn’t intend.
It’s not quite microphone spying, but it’s absolutely something to watch out for.
For years, Apple has offered a feature called Live Photos.
It captures a little bit of video before and after you press the shutter button. Then you can hold your finger down on the picture in Photos and it’ll spring to life.
WHAT IS A LIVE PHOTO?
Here’s what you need to know about the Apple feature…
Live Photos is a handy Apple trick that’s been around for years.
When you take a Live Photo, your iPhone records what happens for 1.5 seconds before and after you take a photo.
For a start, it means that you can scrub along the timeline of the Live Photo to pick a different “key photo” that might look better.
It could mean the difference between someone having their eyes closed or not in a beautiful photo.
But you can also press down on the photo to make it animate.
And if you have a series of Live Photos all snapped in a row, you can select them all and turn them into a single long video.
To turn Live Photos on, tap the Live Photo button at the top of the camera screen. It looks like several concentric circles.
Note that Live Photos also capture audio as well as video. So keep that in mind if you’re sending those pics to other people. It might be worth checking the audio first.
Many people don’t realise that Live Photos don’t just retain video but audio too.
Yes, turn your volume up and try it. You’ll see that you’ve accidentally captured audio on loads of photos without realising. Whoops.
Often apps strip this out when you send or post the pic – but the audio is retained if you AirDrop or iMessage a Live Photo to someone.
And it’s even more important now that WhatsApp has also added support for Live Photos this month.
5
So if you send a Live Photo over WhatsApp, recipients will be able to hear audio there too.
So make sure you’re not accidentally letting people listen in on private comments that you didn’t realise were being recorded.
ON YOUR LAPTOP
It’s a similar story if you have a laptop.
Someone would need to have compromised your laptop with a dodgy app to be spying on you.
It’s a bit trickier to tell as there are lots of different types of laptops.
Your best bet on Windows is to take a look at your app permissions.
To find it, go into your PC’s settings and then go into the section titled either Privacy or Privacy & Security.
There should be a Microphone section under App Permissions that will list all the apps that can access it.
Again, look out for apps that you don’t recognise – and deny access or delete those.
And see if any apps have access that don’t need your microphone. Deny those, too, just to be safe. If it becomes a problem, you can always re-enable it later on.
On Mac, it’s nice and easy.
If you click the Control Centre (the little icon in the top-right corner) then you might see a recording indicator.
5
This will reveal if your microphone is currently active.
And you can also go into the Apple menu, then System Settings > Privacy & Security to review the full list of apps with access to your microphone.
If there are any apps that you don’t recognise with microphone access, it might be a sign that your machine has been compromised.
You can either revoke microphone access in your settings or just delete the app entirely.
ON YOUR SMART SPEAKER
Checking if your smart speaker is listening in will depend on the model.
Spying through a smart speaker would be immensely difficult.
There are only two ways – without very clever hacking – to do it.
The first would be if someone had set up walkie-talkie-style “drop-in” access to your speaker.
You could check for that on your account – just go into settings to see who can access your speaker.
And the second would be if someone had access to your Amazon Alexa account.
They might then be able to listen through the Alexa recordings on your account – accidental or otherwise.
Again, you can easily go into your account settings to see where you’re signed in.
5
And if you recognise any suspicious devices, just boot them out and change your password.
But both of those methods are very unlikely, so you’re probably safe.
Importantly, it’s worth noting that most smart speakers will show a light when the microphone is active.
On Alexa, a blue light means the device is listening. That doesn’t mean you’re being spied on – it’s just a sign that the mic is active.
You can hit the mute button too to shut off the microphone when you definitely don’t need it. If it’s a red ring, it’s muted.
On Google speakers, you’ll usually see white lights pulsing when the microphone is active – or a solid orange light for muted.
And on Apple HomePods, a multicoloured light appears on the top to show microphone activity. There’s no colour for muting.
With all smart speakers, just make sure that no one has access to the account your speaker is linked to.
You can easily check that in Apple, Google, and Amazon account settings.
Kick off suspicious devices from accessing your account, change your password, and add two-factor verification. That adds an extra layer of security to your login, like a code sent over text or authenticator.
That way, you’ll be able to keep any snoopers out of your account for good.
