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.]

  • @Acamon
    2•2 days ago

    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.