Ex-CIA Officer Reveals 5 Signs Your Phone’s Been Hacked

0:00 Here are five signs that your smartphone may have been hacked. And make sure you stay to the end because I'm going to tell you how to fix those five ways without having to go to a professional and take your phone somewhere and spend a bunch of money. I'm former CI officer Jason Hansen and guess what I use? Yes, this is my flip phone right here. And yes, it is a real flip phone, but I know I'm in the minority. I know most people are using a a fancy smartphone these days and they get hacked all the time. And I do a lot of privacy consulting. People come to me and say, "Hey, I think my ex-husband has hacked my phone or I think my ex-boyfriend or whatever." So, here are five ways that it is possible your phone may be hacked. So, what is way? Number one, it is. Wait for it. Wait for it cuz I'm going to show you. It is your battery is draining too fast. So, yes,

0:45 if you have a super older phone and they drain quicker, we know that. But if you've got a normal newer phone and all of a sudden out of the blue, it's not something that's been happening. Your battery is draining super quickly, that is probably because a malicious software is running in the background and draining on the battery. So it might mean that unbeknownst to you, your ex-husband, ex-wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, stalker, whomever might have installed something on there. So you got to be careful if your a battery all of a sudden starts draining. Let's go to number two. What is number two? If you can read my absolutely horrible handwriting, strange background noise. Somebody might be tapping the calls, intercepting the calls. So, if you are on your phone and all of a sudden you hear this weird clicking, you hear some kind of static, like it's not a normal conversation, but something might be going on. So, obviously pay attention to

1:31 that. Don't just dismiss it and write it off. Okay. And now on to number three. Unfamiliar [Music] apps. So, what does unfamiliar apps mean? Yes, too many people have way too many gazillion one apps. You should go check your apps. I would do it every 30 days. It's not that hard to do. It doesn't take that long. Scroll through your apps and if you see unfamiliar apps that you didn't download, that's what the FBI calls a clue. So, it could be key logger. It could be other malicious software that somebody installed on your phone. Could be sometime, you know, to listen your conversations and whatnot. There's obviously all kind of malicious software they can install. So, that's why you need to check your apps because guess what? Most people don't do it. That's why most people are so easy to hack their phones. Not that I would know cuz I would never do anything illegal, but they don't check their phones. And you need to check this stuff, especially

2:17 if you've just gotten out of a relationship and it didn't end well. All right, numero quattro. Again, this is something you should check. This is something that doesn't take a long time to check. Go into your settings. If all of a sudden you're using a ton of data, what does this mean? Well, again, there might be a malicious software and they are sucking out the information from your phone and sending it to remote service. So, if your phone, you check it every 30 days or whatever is running normally and all of a sudden you're like, "Holy crap, why is all this data being used, you might find something, it could be an app or whatever." And again, they are extracting that information. Everybody has cell phones these days. Almost everybody but me smartphone. Hackers know this. They also know that us human beings are lazy. We don't check it. So, that's why this stuff can go on forever before people realize, but not you if you start checking more often. Okay. And finally, number five. If your

3:03 phone is sluggish, it's not working as fast as it used to, which again happens over time. If you've got a a flip phone from 2010 or whenever they really came out, then yeah, that's normal. If you have a newer cell phone that's sluggish, that is overheating, that is freezing, that all of a sudden like restarts and is doing bizarre stuff, that once again is what the FBI calls a clue. And something has been installed on there, maybe, most likely, and something's going on in the background. So, what is the risk of having these five problems? Well, obviously somebody could hack you, your bank account, steal your identity. So, what you need to do, the first and simplest, easiest thing that I recommend comes from our friends at Delete Me. So, again, if your phone is acting funny, maybe you've wondered how scammers or spammers are getting your phone information so easily. The answer is unfortunately data brokers. So, there are companies from all over, they

3:49 collect your name, address, phone number, even your relatives info, and they sell it without your consent, which is obviously terrible, right? As someone who's worked on personal security for years and has dedicated my life, not only with the CIA, but now in the personal security world, private security, I know how important it is and how much of a safety risk it is that your phone can be hacked and all your personal information. That is why I partnered with Delete Me. Delete Me specializes in removing your personal information from hundreds of these data broker websites, including the obscure ones that 99% of people don't even know exist. So, trying to do it yourself is a big pain in the butt. It can take hours upon hours and you might still miss a bunch. So with Delete Me, they handle everything. They fill out all the opt- out forms. They track the removals. They send you detailed privacy reports showing you exactly what was found and

4:36 what they removed. They also keep monitoring your data year round because sites sometimes repopulate your info and it needs to be removed again. And deleting is always one step ahead of them. Plus, which is very cool, they have masked emails and phone tools that are awesome for protecting your info going forward. So you don't even have to give out your real contact details to these websites unless you want to. So it's essentially like having a digital bodyguard for your privacy for your personal life. If you're serious about reclaiming your privacy like I am, check out jointdeleteme.com/hansen and you'll get 20% off your plan just for being here. So again, go to joindeleteme.com/hansen. Get 20% off. It's simple. I highly recommend it. Now we're going to get back to how do you fix your five phone problems? How do you fix if you think

5:22 you're being your phone is being hacked by an ex-husband, ex-wife, whatever? The very first thing you should do is immediately turn your phone on airplane mode. This will stop any data transfer. This will give you more time to investigate, see what's going on. I will tell you, when clients come to me and we check out their phones and we're pretty sure there's being hacked, we just dump it. We turn on airplane mode, we trash the phone, and they get a brand new phone. Now, obviously, that is an extreme scenario, but I do help women who have some nutso crazy stalkers. I mean, it's easy enough to get a new phone these days. You've got to abandon trash in it, but immediately immediately, I can't emphasize this enough. Turn it on airplane mode and then you can go through and look for any apps that might not be there. Then you can do more investigation. So, number two is kind of what I just mentioned at the end of number one. You've turned it on airplane mode. Number two is you're

6:08 going through your phone. You are checking every single app you downloaded. You're making sure there's nothing suspicious like why do I have this random FA flashlight app when my phone already has a flashlight? All those random stuff that you do not remember deleting or excuse me, putting on there yourself, you got to get rid of. So hopefully you don't have like 500 apps, even though I'm guessing there's some people do, but take the time and anything that doesn't look right, quickly delete it. That's number two. The third thing you should do is immediately ran run a malware scan and anti virus scan. There's a lot of companies that can do it for you. There's Norton, there's malware bites. There's a bunch out there. But three, again, quickly run that scan after you've deleted any apps you think were wrong. And that scan will be able to tell you, okay, yes, your ex-husband puts something crazy and he's been stalking you or no, nothing's on there. Number four is change all your passwords

6:53 tied to your phone. So maybe your email, your banking, whatever. And by the way, don't do this with a phone. Remember, we're still going down the line making sure this phone is not infected. So you go to a secure computer, something that you're sure is not hacked. Um maybe even go to a relatives or a friend or a family member, and that's where you change your banking password. That's where you change your Gmail or your Yahoo or whatever mail you're using and all that kind of stuff. So, do not change your passwords from your phone. And number five, if you're worried enough, and again, depending on what you've seen uh on the first four things, is to just make sure all your data is backed up, all your pictures, all that stuff, and do a full factory reset. Again, I know people are like, "No, no, no. It's the end of the world." Well, it's better than having your bank account hacked, having somebody watch you, having your privacy hacked. So, you'll do a full factory reset if you need to. And again, if it's a worst

7:39 worst case scenario, you're just dumping the phone. Hopefully, you're not dealing with anybody hacking your phone. But I know so many people these days who unfortunately reach out to me and need this help and hackers know it because everybody's got a phone. So, protect yourself. Check your phone once a month to make sure nothing out of the ordinary, no new apps are on there. And stay safe. I'm former CI officer Jason Hansen and God bless you. Thanks again, Delete Me, for sponsoring this video. To get your data removed from the internet, check out Delete Me via my link in the description and get 20% off.