How to tell if you are being followed or tracked

First, your safety

If you believe you are in immediate danger, call 999. If you think you are being followed right now, go to a busy public place, a police station or a shop with staff, and call from there. Do not drive home. Do not confront the person.

The rest of this guide assumes a slower situation: a pattern that has been building over days or weeks, and time to think about it.

The signs people notice

Being followed is rarely detected by spotting a car in the mirror. It is usually noticed sideways, through information turning up where it should not.

• Someone knows where you were, or who you were with, when you did not tell them.
• The same vehicle, or the same person, appears in more than one place that has no connection except you.
• A former partner turns up at places you go, and it happens more than coincidence allows.
• Your phone battery drains faster than it did, or the device runs warm when idle.
• Someone refers to the contents of a message or an email they should not have seen.
• A friend or family member is asked questions about your movements by someone you did not expect.

One of these on its own is usually nothing. A pattern is worth taking seriously.

Checking your car

A tracker fitted by someone with brief access to a vehicle is normally a small battery-powered unit held on by a magnet. The places to look are the wheel arches, behind the bumpers, under the rear of the vehicle around the towbar area, under the seats and in the boot beneath the floor panel. A unit wired into the vehicle’s own power is possible but takes longer to fit and is less common.

A torch and a few minutes are enough for a first look. If you find something, photograph it in place before touching it, note the date and time, and do not remove it until you have spoken to the police. Removing it tells whoever fitted it that you know, and it takes evidence out of its context.

There is no offence in England and Wales called “fitting a tracker”, but fitting one to a car you do not own, to monitor a person without their knowledge, will normally amount to stalking or harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and processes personal data without a lawful basis. It is a police matter.

Checking your phone

Software that reports a phone’s location and messages to someone else is sold openly, and it is the most common way partners and former partners are monitored. Installing it on a device you do not own is an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Signs are subtle, because the software is designed to be. Check which apps have permission to use your location, your microphone and accessibility features, and remove any you do not recognise. Look at which devices are signed in to your email and cloud accounts and sign out the ones you do not use. Check whether location sharing is switched on in your phone’s settings and in any family or friend-finding features, and who it is shared with.

If you believe the phone is compromised and the situation is serious, the safe assumption is that whoever installed the software can see what you type on it. Use a different device to research, to contact the police, and to contact anyone who might help. Do not factory-reset the phone straight away; a police digital forensic unit can recover evidence from it that a reset would destroy.

Both major phone operating systems now warn you when a small Bluetooth tracking tag that does not belong to you has been travelling with you. If you receive such a warning, treat it as you would a vehicle tracker: photograph, note, and report before removing.

Keep a record before you do anything else

Whatever you decide to do next, the record is what makes it work. Keep a log of every incident with the date, time, place, what happened and who else was there. Keep it somewhere the person you suspect cannot reach, which may mean a paper notebook rather than a phone. Save messages and screenshots without deleting the originals.

The guidance on our harassment page covers what to capture and in what form. Police and courts act on patterns, and the log is how you show one.

Reporting to the police

Stalking is a specific offence and the police have powers to deal with it, including Stalking Protection Orders, which can be obtained quickly and do not depend on you bringing a prosecution. Report on 101, or 999 if you feel in danger, and ask for the report to be recorded as stalking if that is what the pattern shows. Take the log with you.

The National Stalking Helpline, run by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, gives free advice on what to do and how to deal with the police, and is worth calling before you report if you are unsure.

Where an investigator fits

Most of what we are asked to do in these situations is one of two things.

The first is to establish who is responsible, when the person is not known or when the police need more than a suspicion to act on. That is attribution work, carried out through open-source enquiry and, where proportionate, observation, and it is reported in a form the police and a court can use.

The second is to check a vehicle or a property properly. A physical search for tracking and listening devices is specialist work and we will say at scoping whether it is warranted, and whether a straightforward look of the kind described above is enough.

What we will not do is put someone under surveillance because they are suspected of putting you under surveillance, unless there is a lawful purpose and the work is proportionate to it. The reasons are set out on our legal framework page.

This guide is general information about the law of England and Wales as we understand it at the date shown at the foot of the page. It is not legal advice and does not take account of your circumstances. Before acting on anything here, particularly where court proceedings, a criminal complaint or an employment decision are involved, take advice from a solicitor. We are investigators, not lawyers, and we will say so if a question you bring us needs one.

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