My partner is monitoring my phone. What should I do?

EQTiger Editorial · Sources checked 2026-10-26 · Expert review pending

Before you change a single setting

The instinct is to rip everything out tonight: change every password, delete the strange app, turn off location sharing. Hold off for a day or two unless you are in immediate danger.

A partner who has been watching your phone will often notice when the watching stops. The Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence warns that some people escalate their abuse when monitoring software is removed, and recommends thinking about safety, and talking to an advocate, before you look for it or take it off (NNEDV, 2022). The Hotline gives the same caution about Apple's Safety Check feature: the other person may notice that they no longer see your location or messages, so it is best used as close as possible to when you leave (National Domestic Violence Hotline, n.d.).

None of this means doing nothing. It means doing things in an order that keeps you safer:

1. Get a clean way to talk. A friend's phone, a work computer you trust, a library computer, or a cheap prepaid phone your partner does not know about.
2. From that device, contact the Hotline by phone (1-800-799-7233), text (START to 88788) or chat at thehotline.org. Tell the advocate what your partner seems to know and how.
3. Decide with them which changes to make now, which to make on the day you leave, and which can wait.
4. Keep using your regular phone normally in the meantime, for ordinary things, so nothing looks different.

How partners usually get in

Movies make phone surveillance look like expert hacking. In practice it is usually much simpler. A study that interviewed 89 survivors and the professionals who support them found that most tech abuse by partners was low-tech: the abuser knew or guessed the passcode, had the phone in hand for a few minutes, or was already logged into the same accounts, and then used ordinary features or a ready-made app (Freed and colleagues, 2018).

The common routes:

• Shared or known passcodes. If they have ever watched you unlock your phone, assume they know the code.
• Shared accounts. The same Apple ID or Google account on two devices, a family phone plan whose owner can see call logs, a shared photo library, a laptop logged into your email.
• Location sharing you agreed to once. Find My, Google Maps sharing, a family safety app, a fitness app that shows routes.
• Dual-use apps. A measurement study of app stores found several hundred apps that could be used to spy on a partner; most were sold for child safety or theft recovery, and antivirus tools did not flag them (Chatterjee and colleagues, 2018).
• Physical trackers and smart devices. Small tags hidden in a car or bag, home cameras, smart speakers and doorbells. The Hotline lists all of these as forms of intimate partner surveillance (National Domestic Violence Hotline, n.d.).

Signs worth writing down

There is no reliable checklist for spyware. The Safety Net Project notes that the most common sign is not a technical one at all: it is your partner knowing too much (NNEDV, 2022).

Keep a private note, somewhere your partner cannot reach, of moments like these:

• "He mentioned the café I went to, but I never told him where I was."
• "She quoted a line from my text to my sister."
• "He knew I'd searched for apartments."
• "She showed up at the gym ten minutes after I arrived, on a day I don't usually go."

Write the date, what they knew, and the only ways they could have known it. A pattern pointing at one account or one app tells an advocate or a tech-safety specialist where to look. Battery drain or a phone that heats up can mean many things and is weaker evidence than these moments.

What to change, and when

This table is a starting point for a conversation with an advocate, not a substitute for one. "Tips them off" means the change is likely to be noticed by someone who has been watching.

The Hotline suggests saving contacts for helpers under a codeword or alias if you cannot clear your call and text history, and changing shared passwords and social media privacy settings when it is safe to do so (National Domestic Violence Hotline, n.d.). If you do a factory reset later, the Safety Net Project notes that restoring from an old backup can bring the monitoring app back, so a fresh account is safer (NNEDV, 2022).

When they demand your passcode

Some partners do not bother with apps. They take the phone, or demand it, and read everything in front of you.

If refusing would put you at risk, you do not have to refuse. Hand it over, and protect yourself in other ways: keep helper contacts on a different device, use the codeword names, and do not keep your record of what is happening on that phone.

If you think it is safe to push back, keep it short and do not justify:

"I'm not going to unlock it for you to read. I'm not hiding anything. I just don't want to live like that."

Watch what happens next. A partner who is jealous but safe might sulk, then say something like "That's fair, I'm being paranoid." A controlling partner escalates: accusations, threats, taking the phone by force, punishing you for days. That second reaction is information. The page on signs of coercive control explains why.

Ordinary insecurity is a different situation. If a partner asks for reassurance, says they are struggling with jealousy, and does not snoop or punish, the page on jealousy in a relationship is a better fit.

People who can check the phone with you

You do not have to figure out the technology alone. Researchers in New York tested face-to-face tech-safety consultations with 31 survivors and found real vulnerabilities in many of their devices and accounts, along with a lot of confusion about what was safe to change and when (Freed and colleagues, 2019). A trained person can look at the phone with you and help you decide in what order to do things.

Ways to find that help:

• Ask a Hotline advocate whether there is a local program with a tech-safety specialist.
• Local domestic violence programs often have someone trained in device safety, or know who does.
• If you report to police, ask whether they can preserve evidence from the device before anything is removed.

If you are planning to leave

Phone monitoring often gets worse around a breakup, not better. Plan the tech changes as part of the whole plan: the page on leaving an abusive relationship safely covers what to pack and when, and staying safe after you leave covers changing numbers, accounts and routines afterward. The hard situations and safety guide has the full list.