With hidden or CCTV cameras being operated by almost everyone, on private and public properties alike, privacy and security are mostly a myth. It seems that you are being recorded everywhere you go. But, sometimes, hidden cameras are present in uncomfortable locations, locations where people might be tracking our activities for illegal purposes.
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Everyone knows that security is our primary concern and is completely in our hands. While people have no right to track your activities, they are still indulging in the activity.
How You Can Detect Hidden Cameras?
Do you feel you are being tracked or getting unwanted attention? Do you want to safeguard your privacy? Here are the best ways to detect hidden secret cameras and microphones around you.
1. Search Thoroughly
This is the first and simplest way to go around finding hidden cameras and gadgets. Making an initial sweep in your surroundings can help ensure that no such camera is hidden in places where it invades your privacy. You can start by looking around for anything that seems unusual or out of place. This could include a lot of the usual elements like flower pots, chairs, tables, and cupboards.
Apart from just checking them for hidden cameras, you could search them deeply for any concealed microphones that could be recording audio from your home or office. Look under couch cushions, table tops, and shelves. Smaller cameras can be easily hidden under convenient locations like table tops and below cupboards and shelves.
Cameras use a lot of wires to connect so another good idea in searching would be to look for any unattended or unused wires in your premises. While remote tracking is a modern technique, there is a chance that the equipment could be attached to your room via wired systems.
2. Analyse The Mirror
Another effective way to find hidden cameras is by using mirrors, or precisely a two-way mirror test. Usually, mirrors are great tools to conceal suspicious cameras as they are some objects we use daily but don’t pay much heed to what goes on behind the scenes. There is although a technique to know whether the other side of the mirror is being used for shady business. When you touch an actual mirror there is always a little amount of space between the refection of your finger and your actual finger. If, however, it is a two-way mirror there will be no space at all. Your finger and its reflection will appear to touch at a point. This is how you know that there is something weird going on behind the ‘mirror.’
3. Using Your Smartphone
Another great hack to check whether you are being tracked by hidden cameras is using your mobile’s cellular connectivity. When you are out of the room that you think is being tracked, check your mobile phone’s cellular signals. Now enter the affected room and check them again. If the signal drops or completely falls flat, this is an indication of something wrong happening in terms of unwanted equipment in your room. Try and make calls immediately when you enter the room. If are able to connect easily, then there might be no such issue.
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There’s another method to track hidden cameras via your smartphone. A smartphone with a LED flash is also effective with spotting regular CCTV cameras. Download a third-party flashlight app, once that blinks the flash multiple times in the form of signals. Open the flashlight app and set it to a signal that makes it blink rapidly. Now do this in the affected room with the lights turned off and flash the light against all the walls and objects in the room. A tiny red beam will reflect on your LED flash if indeed there is a hidden spy camera in your room. Apart from the smartphone, there are even dedicated gadgets available in the market for spying on these suspicious hidden cam.
4. The Torch Test
Another way to detect cameras via the two-way mirror trick is by effectively using a torch against it. For this to work, turn off all the lights in the room you are suspicious about. Now switch on your torch light and aim it at the mirror to beam across strong light towards it. If there is indeed a spying room behind the wall, then the light from the torch should make that particular room apparently visible from your affected room.
5. Look Through The Mirror
If you try to look closely, you might even be able to see through a possible two-way mirror. Press your face against the mirror glass and put your hands around your eyes, blocking all light from the sides. The see through the mirror is made in a way that allows some light to pass through it and so if you look closely you might see the room beyond.
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These are some of the fastest and most efficient ways to detect hidden cameras and microphones that will help you show proof to authorities regarding the potential invasion of your privacy at home or office. You could make use of standalone detectors and apps that are available in the market and are made to detect such kind of cameras solely. Such detectors are easy to use that you must use it with a right angle. Or if you want a cheap solution, the smartphone app is quiet useful. There are apps available for iOS and Android that will turn your smartphone into a makeshift.