# Text message snooping



## Quality (Apr 26, 2016)

I've got a friend going through a divorce. Wife filed and being pretty nasty in order to justify herself (nobody is cheating). They are still living together (despite a really mean-spirited lying motion last week for exclusive use of the marital home - which she lost in magnificent fashion at their first appearances before the judge).

Today he calls me saying he is pretty sure his wife is snooping his text messages somehow. 

After eliminating a couple possibilities, we think she may be connecting using an old I Watch or other bluetooth linked device.

Instead of shutting down the possible leak, I told him to hold off and MAYBE we can find a way to document her spying somehow. Thinking maybe he and I could stage some texts tomorrow and see if she takes the bait and in some way or other documents the breach of his privacy.

Anyone have any ideas? @Taxman or other attorneys?


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## Bananapeel (May 4, 2015)

Is there any particular reason he needs to prove she's spying? What does he hope to gain by it?


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## ReturntoZero (Aug 31, 2015)

He should use her snooping to improve his position.


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## Lostinthought61 (Nov 5, 2013)

i am not sure what the end results would be, but if you really want to do this...if he had an old laptop around install a keylogger on it and then note in text that there are some confidential papers on that computer that you need to look at and keep with you. the minute she logs into that laptop you will have a record of everything that is going on. film yourself installing the key logger software and your intention.


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## SentHereForAReason (Oct 25, 2017)

- Are we talking about an iPhone (iOS Device)?
- If so, are we talking about just standard text messages using the messaging app that's built into the iPhone?

Once those are answered we can go from there.


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## Taxman (Dec 21, 2016)

Does not sound like entrapment, however, don't, just find the link and sever it. What purpose does it serve to bait her, and lower the boom, other than to further anger her, and give her cause for revenge. In my experience, in a divorce, as in any business transaction: cold, emotionless, deliberate. This is a business transaction. You have to look at it in this manner. It saves your sanity. I have a wonderful older woman as a client. She was married to a louse. Worked under the table his entire career. Sued the utter crap out of her. Got spousal support for five years, proceeds of the marital home, a few other things. We realized that it was just cash, we made sure that he signed off, and would bother her no more. That was our objective. In the meantime, his efforts to hurt their mother had stuck a knife in his relationship with his children. In the grand scheme of things, she came out of the divorce with her kids, most of her pension, and a life. Her ex, got some money, lost his family. Jerk.


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## Quality (Apr 26, 2016)

stillfightingforus said:


> - Are we talking about an iPhone (iOS Device)?
> - If so, are we talking about just standard text messages using the messaging app that's built into the iPhone?
> 
> Once those are answered we can go from there.


Yes. An iphone.

I met the friend out at a bible study tonight and we sat down afterward and we 'think' she may have just seen a "notification' screen on his ipad with a new secured passcode. His notifications were set to 'always' so we changed that to "when unlocked".

I had him download a free motion-activated camera that he might be able to catch her trying to snoop his devices (or ransack his office again) in the future with; and, hopefully, get her to stop.

The point of the exercise is simply a proactive defense and, if ever needed, as a means to counterbalance her outlandish claims and fabrications. The wife is an emotionally abusive manipulative control freak gaslighting my friend claiming she's the victim of his supposed emotional abuse. He/we never can be sure what she's going to say or claim next so I feel he needs to be proactive in obtaining and keeping a couple aces up his sleeve, just in case.

He doesn't want to crush her. In fact, he'd still prefer to reconcile. He just doesn't want to be crushed by her and she's fighting to win (and like Taxman's client - will lose in the end in the eyes of her children - but she's completely oblivious as of now).


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## GusPolinski (Jan 21, 2014)

If I were looking to feed her misinformation, I’d probably buy a burner and text back and forth with it as if it were my lawyer. I’d be sure to hide the phone really well (probably at work) and turn it off before coming home from work.

In the meantime, have him download the “Find My iPhone” app in order to see which devices are linked to his account. He could also check with his cell provider to see if any apps have been configured for SMS syncing.

If, however, he simply wants to keep her out of his devices, texts, etc, he could...

Change his primary email address, create a new Apple ID, and get a new phone and phone number — in his name only and on a different carrier.

If he wants to keep his devices, he could backup and factory reset each of them, as well as disable iMessage, along with all of iCloud’s “Continuity” feautures (again, on each device). 

Also have him disable iCloud backups, opting for encrypted local backups instead.

I’d also start looking for keyloggers on any PCs.


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## SentHereForAReason (Oct 25, 2017)

Ok, knowing it's an apple device, there are two ways you can go about this and both start off with doings the same thing.

1. Enable two factor authentication on the Apple ID account - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204915

2. Once that's enabled you can start locking down everything as Gus has stated above or you can just authenticate the phone that will be the hub of the security and and the account and as soon as someone tries to snoop with any device, through either messaging or icloud, etc. If that device that is being used to snoop, it's going to send a push notification to your phone and alert you of a device trying to do so and then you can track it from there.

My STBXW did this to me a few months back lol. I foolishly told her how I found out the heart and soul of her affair and the methods of how, where and when she used to carry out the affair and then after that, she started getting help from people to shut me out. She enabled 2FA on her phone and made sure none of her other devices had access to anything in the cloud so she could continue to carry on her dance with her soulmate.


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## Quality (Apr 26, 2016)

Thank you guys. Passing security measures on to my suffering friend. He'll be much better off in the long run, he just doesn't know it yet. 




stillfightingforus said:


> Ok, knowing it's an apple device, there are two ways you can go about this and both start off with doings the same thing.
> 
> 1. Enable two factor authentication on the Apple ID account - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204915
> 
> ...


In the long run, you'll be thankful she locked you out. It's like reading the ramblings of a crack addict and just keeps you in their messed up triangle longer. Sure it's nice to just KNOW what's really going on and it, for awhile, helps you really understand just how crazy, lost and irrational they have become which then begets a final contentment that you did all you could and they've just gone nuts. However, far too many betrayed spouse's, no matter how much they can logically understand it's unhealthy long term to keep such snooping avenues open, just can't or won't give it up voluntarily. 

It's really hard not to watch a trainwreck happening in slow motion and in real time.


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## AtMyEnd (Feb 20, 2017)

Quality said:


> Thank you guys. Passing security measures on to my suffering friend. He'll be much better off in the long run, he just doesn't know it yet.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'm just seeing this thread now but I'm curious if there are any updates. I'm going through divorce myself and just found out this past Friday that somehow my wife was reading my texts too. The OM's wife and I speak fairly often since everything happened and she called me telling that he had told her my wife emailed him telling him about advice she gave me and things I told her that no one could know unless they looked at the texts.

After a couple hours between Verizon, the Apple store and then calling Apple support we figured that she was using my old phone to access my account. Now granted the old phone can only send and receive data since there is no cellular service, but imessages are data and not text. We changed all the settings on my current phone, disconnected it from my cloud and I had to change just about every password to every account I had. From what Apple told me, if she knows the password to the email address for the Apple ID, there's a way to access imessages that way as well without using the cloud. We also removed the old phone from my cloud and activated the find my phone feature so the next time it gets turned on it will notify me. I also set the lost phone feature so the next time the phone connects to wifi it'll lock down to the point that only Apple can open it and "whoever" has the phone will see the message "You're busted, but very clever. Now put the phone back in my night table"


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## SentHereForAReason (Oct 25, 2017)

AtMyEnd said:


> I'm just seeing this thread now but I'm curious if there are any updates. I'm going through divorce myself and just found out this past Friday that somehow my wife was reading my texts too. The OM's wife and I speak fairly often since everything happened and she called me telling that he had told her my wife emailed him telling him about advice she gave me and things I told her that no one could know unless they looked at the texts.
> 
> After a couple hours between Verizon, the Apple store and then calling Apple support we figured that she was using my old phone to access my account. Now granted the old phone can only send and receive data since there is no cellular service, but imessages are data and not text. We changed all the settings on my current phone, disconnected it from my cloud and I had to change just about every password to every account I had. From what Apple told me, if she knows the password to the email address for the Apple ID, there's a way to access imessages that way as well without using the cloud. We also removed the old phone from my cloud and activated the find my phone feature so the next time it gets turned on it will notify me. I also set the lost phone feature so the next time the phone connects to wifi it'll lock down to the point that only Apple can open it and "whoever" has the phone will see the message "You're busted, but very clever. Now put the phone back in my night table"


You should be good to go now. Enabling Two-Factor Auth could have done the trick as well to getting her blocked out or letting you know when she attempted to get in but you did the most thorough way. The only other hole would be that you can access Verizon Text Messages from the Verizon Text Message Center. At least you can for all androids, not sure if it works the same for iOS devices.


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## AtMyEnd (Feb 20, 2017)

stillfightingforus said:


> You should be good to go now. Enabling Two-Factor Auth could have done the trick as well to getting her blocked out or letting you know when she attempted to get in but you did the most thorough way. The only other hole would be that you can access Verizon Text Messages from the Verizon Text Message Center. At least you can for all androids, not sure if it works the same for iOS devices.


Verizon said that there's no way to access text messages unless you add one of the child safety plans to your plan, so parents can check up on what their kids are doing. They double checked everything and there were no additional features on my plan. I just laugh at the whole thing though, New York's a no fault state, I could be dating 20 different women right now and it wouldn't make a difference for the divorce proceedings. All she's trying to do is get some kind of dirt on me to show our friends as a way for her to try and make herself look less at fault. It's ridiculous.


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## SpinyNorman (Jan 24, 2018)

As to catching her, not sure how you will prove she did it. If I was her lawyer, I'd point out you could have staged the whole thing and blamed her.

As others have suggested, you might have some real fun feeding her disinformation, such as you are meeting your gf at the most rancid hellhole in town.

I'm kind of ashamed my devious imagination can't do better than that, but surely someone in TAM has a better suggestion of things you'd feed to a rotten spouse to get her to do something she regrets.

EDIT: Thought of another, if she has a female friend or relative you have a good reason to dislike, pass messages to a burner phone as though you're having an affair w/ her. If you know some details about the friend, this will work better.


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