Apps for finding spyware someone installed on my phone?

[crashley21]

I've looked at a lot of anti-spyware apps, but I can't find one that specifically says it can find stealth apps that someone installed when they got ahold of your phone. So it would look like an app that I personally wanted to have. They mostly talk about apps that were installed by a virus or link, etc.

It would be nice to be able to disable camera/mic functions too, or at least be notified when they are being accessed.

I don't mind paying to purchase the app, but most require a double digit monthly subscription, and I make next to nothing because I'm disabled so chances are even if I subscribed the money wouldn't be there to continue the subscription.

I've lurked here for many years without signing up, I love you guys! There are so many tutorials and apps that would never have known about if not for you guys. The developers here are geniuses. So thank you immensely in advance for your help!

 

[galaxys]

Maybe try play store free app Bitdefender which has 5 million dl's & 4.7 rating. I have not tried it....

"Bitdefender Antivirus is one of the few actually free antivirus apps. It hasn’t changed much over the years. It offers a basic scanning feature, a simple interface, quick performance, and no configuration. This is a great one for super basic needs. All it really does is scan stuff ..." androidauthority

 

[crashley21]

Maybe try play store free app Bitdefender which has 5 million dl's & 4.7 rating. I have not tried it....

"Bitdefender Antivirus is one of the few actually free antivirus apps. It hasn’t changed much over the years. It offers a basic scanning feature, a simple interface, quick performance, and no configuration. This is a great one for super basic needs. All it really does is scan stuff ..." androidauthority

Thanks for the reply. Do anti-virus apps detect spyware though?

 

[galaxys]

They can, just read some of the app playstore reviews and it's Developer app description for details....

 

[James_Watson]

Try ‘Malwarebytes for Android’.

 

[blackhawk]

If you really think there's spyware do a hard reset.
If you still aren't satisfied go full nuke and have the firmware reflashed.
No virus detection has a 100% detection rate and the worst trojans only a reflash can eradicate them.

A better question is why do you think there's spyware on the phone?

In over 6 years of using outdated OS's I've never had to do a reload because of malware.
Once found a nasty trojan preloader before it could be triggered with Malwarebytes.
I had a infected jpeg that damaged files in the download folder. Deleting the jpeg and some of the files ended it's brief rain of terror.

Be careful what apps you load, what you download*, what you click and never let others have unsupervised access to your device. React quickly to abnormal behavior to find it's cause.
Delete any file you suspect of being malware including jpegs and pngs.
Be prepare to do a hard reset at any time if you believe the device has been infected.
Always keep at least 2 complete isolated data backups for the device. Stagger syncs to them so a virus can't get embedded on both of them... hopefully.
Lol, paranoid yet?


*use only cloud based email apps like gmail

 

[jwoegerbauer]

Google apps are spyware, Facebook is spyware, Whatsapp is spyware, Instagram is spyware. In principle all Social Media apps are spyware.
All apps what are designed to track your Internet browsing habits, such as frequented sites and favorite downloads, and then provide advertising companies with marketing data are spyware. All apps what can access your contacts data are spyware ...

 

[blackhawk]

Android, the spyware party mix...

 

[lorenzdenesiks]

You can try Bitdefender Free or Malwarebytes Premium. I have not used the second one before but have read a review at https://antivirusdoctor.net/ and think about using it on my smartphone.