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.]
Unless your spouse or family members happen to be NSA agents or feds of some kind this is baseless paranoia. If you want to be concerned over genuine privacy concerns to feed your fears look into PRISM or nine-eyes, not your own family installing RATS on your system for … reasons.
Its not impossible there are obviously examples of snooping usually cause of spouses and fear of cheating. In your case though, are the logistics and reasoning there to support the concern?.
The thing about extremely anxious and paranoid people is this: they get so caught up in their what-if nightmare cassarole fantasies that they forget the basic but important questions like “but why? for what reason? Realistically how could they do it without notice, and whats the time investment or monetary cost to keep it up? What are the actual chances if I were to spitball a statistical probability of this event actually playing out, 1/10,000? What useful information could they actually get from this? Am I or my information REALLY that special? Do I think anyone in my personal life really wants to know about my shameful sexual kinks or dirty secrets? Can a person who barely knows how to open a web browser ot read emails really competent enough to comprise my system?” These kinds of reality-check thoughts don’t occur to extremely paranoid people while on a fear-spiraling episode.
You felt the need to cover your ass saying you weren’t schitzo, so you probably already know these kind of thoughts are indicative of potential serious misfirings in your neural network. Something might not be right in your ape brain. If your fears and paranoia become even worse to the point you think your own family has been replaced by clones or is trying to poison you, please seek help.
Finally, if you truly do have concerns about snooping that come from a place of legitimacy, theres always things you can do to shore up your security. cryptography encryption and physical pass keys for your digital information, black tape over your cameras when not in use, soundproofing foam over microphones if you can’t rip them out or physically kill them. Keep your phone in a diy Faraday cage box made layered with aluminum foil. Hell get some bug detectors and sweep the whole place. You aren’t helpless. Use your brain and take control of your environment one step at a time.