How to check if your phone is being tapped: cyber expert names alarming signs

A phone that has been bugged can give itself away. When a "spy" is connected to the gadget, it starts to behave unusually, for example, it executes unspecified commands, and the battery power is consumed very quickly.

As cyber expert Kostiantyn Korsun told Glavkom in an interview, when a device performs functions that you didn't ask, you can suspect tapping. At the same time, he noted that it all depends on the professionalism of those who decide to bug someone else's phone.

Korsun said that people can connect to a phone for various purposes. The expert added that a fairly innocent reason is to view the browser history. In this case, spies are interested in what sites the phone owner has visited and what products they  are interested in.

"Every spyware program regularly transmits data from the phone to somewhere remotely and uses battery power. At the same time, the phone's camera or microphone or some light bulb may suddenly turn on. This is a sign that the gadget needs to be rebooted," Korsun explained.

He clarified that such programs often use the gadget's RAM, which it is cleared during a reboot.

He also warned that not only advertisers, but also foreign intelligence agencies, criminals, the government, and other entities can show interest in your phone.

In this case, it is much more difficult to understand that the phone has become the object of espionage, as such structures "use professional equipment that can bypass everything."

"There are various technologies when a tiny program is hidden among regular files that does not give itself away in any way, and no antivirus will find it. This inactive program will send one byte of information to a remote control server once a day in half a second. Although it will look like a completely harmless application with a few bytes of this bot," he said.

Korsun noted that in this case, it is almost impossible to find the spyware even after "disassembling the phone into atoms."