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FORGOTTEN HISTORY: People discovered hidden recording device stories - Caught on Camera
There are certain spaces where many of us go about our business without much thought as to who is watching. That's because we're almost sure no one is. Our homes, bedrooms, bathrooms, public restrooms, or changing cubicles, for example, are considered private areas. Or at least, they should be.
But thanks to spy cams now coming in all shapes and disguises, experts say cases of people being recorded without their knowledge are rapidly increasing. Someone asked, "Has anyone ever discovered that they were being secretly watched by a hidden recording device? If so, how did you find it?" and many of the answers might leave you feeling more than a little unsettled.
Bored Panda has put together a list of the most disturbing and creepy ones: from the person who found out years later that she and her husband had been secretly recorded "knocking boots" while in college, to the workers who discovered their manager had planted a camera in the office bathroom. We also explain what to do if you suspect (or find out) you're being recorded without your consent. That info is between the images.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
A female co-worker got a talking to about how she was violating the "no tattoos" policy in our office. She argued she did not have any visible tattoos. The manager claimed he knew for a fact she had a tattoo.
Her only tattoo was on her left hip. Not visible with office clothing.
And that's how we found out our manager had put cameras in the bathroom and changing room illegally.
He was dumbfounded when HE was the one who got fired and then prosecuted. 2 years probation. Company paid my female co-worker $50,000 settlement. She put it down on a house.
Turns out manager wasn't a pervert, just a control f***k. Kept logs of who used the bathroom and for how long and whether or not they were actually doing their business. Somebody found his big .XLS file with all the data in it and the notes are hilariously weird.
"10/15 - 5:17pm - Jones. Again. No phone. 9 minutes. Third time today. Speak to him about fiber.".
Technology has moved in such a way that we never really know if or when we are being watched. Privacy has almost become a thing of the past, whether online or IRL. Sometimes we suspect our activity is being monitored. Other times, we have no idea at all.
A woman named Kassy Zanjani has revealed that she lives in constant fear of being secretly filmed, after a video of her in a fast-food restaurant in Vancouver went viral.
According to her, she was approached by a man wearing sunglasses. He asked her for her name and told her she was gorgeous. Zanjani says she tried to "politely reject him" by saying she had a boyfriend.
Little did she know he was wearing a pair of Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, which were recording her the entire time...
RELATED:
#2
A former boss eventually told me without recognizing that it was weird and unwelcome.
Turns out he had been secretly filming the whole office for a year because he thought one of my coworkers was faking a serious injury and he was trying to catch her walking on her broken foot and when that plan failed, he kept looking for something else to use against her.... and when that failed, he came to my desk after she left one evening and pointed to this odd box in the back of the room and explained that it was actually a camera and why he had installed it and told everyone it was a temperature sensor...and then asked for dirt on said coworker. I was shocked.I stuttered something about her being the best employee there and that I needed to take my break and got out of there. Warned the coworker and then started job hunting.
#3
When I was 15 I was living with my dad at the time in a large house with my siblings. There were three bathrooms, but I only really ever used the one next to my room. This bathroom used to have one of those pole things going from the tub corner into the ceiling that had trays on it. I can't really remember why we took it out, but we did, and they only patched the hole it left in the tub. The hole in the ceiling was left there.
Years go by and I suddenly start feeling weird when showering. Like an itch in the back of my brain or something. I kept disregarding the feeling, thinking it was ridiculous that a stranger would crawl into our attic and put something up there. I imagined a whole headquarters set up up there and laughed it off.
Eventually curiosity got the best of me, and I hoisted myself up and did my best to look directly into the hole but... Nothing. I couldn't see anything, it was too dark. I wasn't about to go into the attic myself because it was in the closet of someone else's room and that would be weird, right?
More time goes by, and long story short, one of my siblings confessed he had set up a camera up there to film me because he felt he had become obsessed with me. I'll spare the details because this is already pretty identifying, but it has royally screwed me up. Now whenever I feel like I'm being watched *I tell someone*. No matter how crazy it seems. I also refuse to use anyone else's shower until both me and my SO have inspected it.
The man later uploaded the video to Instagram and TikTok, where it was viewed more than 30,000 times within the space of a week. Zanjani only found out when a friend spotted it and alerted her.
"Zanjani's friend found the video among more than 100 on the man's social channels featuring young women, nearly all of whom reveal their name when he introduces himself and makes a pass," CBC News reported. "In at least one instance, he asks whether the woman lives in the area."
Zanjani is among a growing number of women who say they've fallen victim to being filmed without their consent or knowledge.
#4
Ha! This topic actually just came up the other day!
I went to college with a guy who dropped out after two quarters, and never deleted him from my facebook friends. A few months ago, he messages me for my email address and sends over a bunch of pictures of me and my now-husband back from college, as well as some funny videos and stuff.
I was like, "oh wow! thanks! Were you just holding onto these all this time, ha ha ha"
and he tells me that he just found an old hard drive that had stuff from then on it, and since me and now-husband are married and stuff we'd probably like having the photos. Oh, and don't worry, he deleted the videos of the two of us having intimate time.
I was like uh..... how did you have those kind of videos of us?
Apparently me and now-husband didn't always lock his dorm room door before knocking boots, and as he was now-husband's neighbor, he would just crack the door open and video tape us. But don't worry, he now realizes that wasn't cool to do and deleted the videos.
Yup. That happened.
#5
I found out when my screen froze and my mouse acted weird. Prior to that my boss kept dropping topics that had weird coincidences, so when I saw my screen freeze, I realized he must be viewing my computer so I started investigating. In the programs, there was an app to monitor the computer.
John Dilligaf 7 hours ago
it's not at all unusual for companies to put monitoring programs on their work computers. I just assume that any work computer I have or use has one on it.
#6
My girlfriend and I were visiting my home from college. My parents decided to leave the house for 3-4 hours. We started making out on the couch in the living room, when I noticed a blue light coming from my moms laptop which had been left open and conveniently pointed towards the couch. She had left the camera recording in an attempt to see what we do alone.
I confronted her about it, she said she was playing with the webcam and had to leave in a hurry. But you can clearly see on the video that she carefully placed the laptop to look right at the couch and was in no rush. She maintains that I'm the a*****e for accusing her of such an atrocious thing.
One injury law firm in Chicago has revealed that there has been an increasing number of legal cases involving people being recorded without their consent, especially in private or non-public areas like restrooms.
"Victims of non-consensual recordings often experience emotional distress, trauma, anxiety, PTSD, issues related to the violation of trust and other consequences tied to such unauthorized intrusions," the legal firm's site notes.
However, the firm's experts say you absolutely have legal protection if it ever happens to you...
#7
My husband and I bought our house from a pretty weird guy. We never actually met him, but his real estate agent described him as a "grand entertainer," which I think actually meant "hosted constant orgies." There were giant mirrors all over the house, lights that changed colors when you walked under them, and a drawer full of various brands and sizes of condoms. When we were doing the inspection before closing, we found a bunch of turned-on webcams scattered throughout the house. We unplugged them as we found them, but probably not before he saw and heard us making fun of him.
Anne Jones 2 hours ago
Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves. Serves him right.
#8
I was with my girlfriend in h**h school and we were in her room. Nighttime but light was on and door was open per parents instruction. She turns the light off to show me this glow in the dark thing.
So she had one of those fake windows that just looks like a window frame that you hang on the wall. It had some little plants and stuff on it. When the light went out she happened to look over at it and saw a small red light. Knowing it shouldn't be there she went and pulled out a small hidden camera.
She left it on the kitchen table that night and the next morning it was gone and no one ever said anything.
Eventually we learned (they told us) that they thought that I might be one of the government people who were spying on them.
Short background: They met because he (he was a step dad to gf) was her d**g d****r. They continued to do sp**d and were extremely paranoid.
That night they told me I'd gained their trust and told me all about the people watching them. Apparently they hid in the bushes and watched their house. They were secretly dr*gging them as a government test on poor people. Also, some of them were ninjas that couldn't always be seen. They were concerned I was one of them initially.
Tl;dr Gf's parents thought I was an invisible ninja sent to get in their good graces so I could test experimental d***s on them.
Tom Brincefield 44 minutes ago
Sounds like they were doing plenty of experiments with d***s on their own.
#9
A few years back I had a laptop that was infested with viruses. At the time I was in denial because I had Norton and there was no way I could get viruses with the God of virus security on my computer. So one night I'm sitting around watching YouTube videos when a chat box pops up and says "stop watching stupid YouTube videos". The mouse then closed out of chrome. We talked through pop-ups for a few minutes before I turned off my WiFi and ran a few virus scans. I have no idea for how long I had been watched. I live a fairly boring existence so I don't think there's any weird videos of me floating around. When I looked at Norton it told me that someone had been pinging off my firewall for months before finding an open port but Norton had decided that this wasn't a big deal. Thanks Norton for keeping me informed! Sorry for formatting, I suck at writing and am on my phone.
TL;DR super haxxor doesn't like my taste in YouTube videos.
The experts say that if you ever spot a hidden recording device, take pictures of it but do not touch or remove the camera.
"Leave that part to the police," they advise. "Or if you learn that others have been recorded and that the police are actively investigating such violations at a place that you know you have visited, you should also contact them right away, even if you’re not 100% sure that your privacy rights were violated."
The firm warns that hidden cameras placed in private or semi-private areas — such as restroom facilities — can violate multiple state and federal laws and carry serious penalties.
#10
I accidentally found the nanny cam one time when I was babysitting. I was babysitting for a toddler; he was pointing at a stack of VHS tapes on top of the TV set. There was a teddy bear sitting on top of the stack, and I noticed that it was abnormally heavy when I went to pick it up to get a video. I didn't really think anything of it until an hour or so later, after I'd put the kid to bed and was watching TV. I picked up the bear again and noticed that its eyes were mismatched; one of them was a camera lense, and one was a button. I put it back down and tried to ignore it. I never said anything to the parents about it, but the next time I went over to babysit, the bear was gone.
#11
From middle school until a point in time that I'm not quite sure about (likely when I got my new laptop for college this past June), my dad had a program called [Spector Pro](http://www.spectorsoft.com/products/SpectorPro_Windows/) installed on my computer. Back in middle school on the main computer I used, I noticed a little red square in the notification area in the right corner, but when I clicked on it, it just prompted me for a password so I gave up. (I think they've since updated the program so that this square doesn't even show up there--I found Spector Pro on my h**h school laptop in the processes list on the admin account that I didn't usually use.)
Later on my dad had left the program's window open so I found out that he had all my passwords to everything, copies of every email and instant message I had sent/received, a video of everything I did, keystrokes, plus more... it was really uncomfortable. The company claims it's mainly some kind of pedophile deterrent, but the extent that my dad used it to track my activity freaked me out, especially when I was in h**h school. There wasn't any reason for him to be tracking me so closely, either--I was a good kid and knew how to smartly navigate online even when I was fairly young, so there definitely wasn't need for concern about that kind of stuff.
In the FAQ for the program on their website it warns that using it for "adult children" (among other people) could get you in trouble with the law, and although I was in middle school when it started, he never stopped using it until he had to, since I set up my new laptop myself so he couldn't install it here. I don't think he ever realized that I knew he was tracking me the whole time.
It's definitely not as severe as some other people's experiences since some people interpret it as overprotective parenting... but spector pro is sketchy as f**k to me.
#12
My Brother had quit middle school for a couple of months claiming his throat closed up, that he was very weak to the point he couldn't walk, and specifically that there was something definitely wrong with him.
After a month of not being able to walk and go to school we took up going to the hospital where doctors would prescribe him a bunch of medication and claim he had a ton of diseases.
2 months of being in the hospital pass by and he finally comes back home, and it was about a week after he came back we bought him a walker and even worse was the fact that he couldn't go down our 2 flights of stairs in our house. I was taking a shower one day when heard a massive crash outside my door, I got out and checked on it only to find that my brother had had fallen face first into the wall with a white board and a couple of boxes. He had a few head wounds and luckily nothing to severe.
That same weem my Dad had set up a secret camera lodged into a piece of our furniture looking out towards our living room. The tape recorded about 1 and 30 minutes of my Brother walking normally and doing all the things he would normally do and when my dad came up stairs he would fake not being able to walk. When my father checked the tapes he was pissed. He showed my mom when she got home and he wanted to wake up my brother and give him a good yelling to quit the act. My mom had told him not to, in hopes that if there was in fact something crazy driving him to do all these things he would come out and say it so we could help him out.
My dad showed my brother the video and within a month after seeing the video he went back to school.
It took him 5 years after to tell us all that the reason he did all these things was because he was being bullied a ton at school for his weight problems.
All I can say about him now is that the Bullying he received in middle school did take a toll on his academic record and he himself feels that he struggles with making connections with people. He did however lose 70 pounds, become a manager at a chain restaurant, and he is on his last month paying for his culinary education. I'm proud of him and in all I'm very happy he never chose to take his own life.
Also that if I'm ever doing anything I wonder if my Dad may be watching me.
The Consumer Shield legal platform, which connects victims with lawyers across the United States, notes that laws for video recording are fairly similar across all 50 states:
"Generally, if someone wants to record you in public, they can — but they may not record you on your own property or where you could reasonably expect privacy."
It adds, though, that there are cases where it is legal to record someone — for example, in a public business like a coffee shop. Here, it could be permissible for another guest to record your conversation.
#13
Like on your laptops webcam? I put a post-it or piece of painters tape over it because I'm just paranoid. Also once back in the days when we shared computers my sis left some messenger with cam on with her friend while I came in to change. I dunno how much he saw but I always use the tape or turn away a webcam when I'm not using it now. Plus all those news stories like the hacker who blackmailed the beauty queen or whatever with photos after getting into her webcam.
Shelli Aderman 8 hours ago
Yup! I have a little slide-closed thing stuck over mine. I just open it for Zooms.
#14
My father used to record all phone conversations that went out over the landline, in 1998 that was all calls.
I didn't care and often said things to mess with him when I was on the phone (like flirting with male friends and saying "gross" whenever women were brought up) but what really drove me crazy was that one day his boss called and I answered. Later his boss said I had been rude. So despite the fact that he had conversation that showed I wasn't rude I got grounded so he could keep his poorly kept secret.
#15
When i was a senior in high school we used to ditch the last two hours which was just a study hall for us seniors. A bunch of us would go to my buddies house and play ping pong and smoke.
His parents caught on and put up a deer camera hidden behind something on the wall. We some how found it while looking for a ping pong ball and we looked at all the pictures and could not stop laughing because obviously we were under the influence. For the rest of the school year we would just delete all the pictures except for one of his dad looking into the camera to making sure it was well hidden.
Similarly, you can be recorded at your place of work.
"Usually, workplaces have the right to record you. For example, they might monitor work-related phone calls or emails using work equipment. Unless you were recorded for non-business purposes, you may not be able to sue your employer for recording you."
#16
Local coffee shop in my city had a camera under the sink pointed at the toilet. Some girl found it when she dropped her phone and they caught the guy because he had accidentally filmed himself installing it. It was a much bigger issue because little kids use that bathroom. Now I'm cagey in public restrooms.
#17
When I was about 9 or 10 a police man came to our door. He told my parents that the neighbor behind us has been recording and taking pictures of us and when the man moved he left behind some and the new owners found them. The police could not find the guy and ever since them I make sure the windows are covered when I undress.
#18
A (now former) good friend of mine from college got busted for putting cameras in the girl's bathroom of the high school he taught at.
He'd been through some s**t, ended up with a nasty m**h habit and decided it'd be nice to watch the teenage hotties in his class go potty. So he rigged up cameras in the bathroom and wired them to his school computer. He ended up getting caught when the whole school network bogged down due to the software he was running. Ended up doing a couple years in prison, or so the web tells me.
If you feel your rights have been violated, besides calling the police, you should also consider contacting a lawyer.
"Beyond criminal prosecution, victims of such invasions of privacy may pursue civil legal claims seeking monetary damages for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and other harms caused by this illegal conduct," explains the Sexner Injury Lawyers LLC site.
Have you ever been recorded without your consent or knowledge? How did you find out, and what did you do? Let us know all about it in the comments section below...
#19
My family used to own a couple convenience stores. (Can not include the name due to legal ramifications, but think of the one that has two numbers in its name and rhymes with Evan)
One day, the company sends out techs to install a couple WiFi Antennas for new gear that was supposed to come into the store. They came out with network switches and routers, so looked legit. I left before the actual antennas were installed because i had to get to class. Fast forward a couple weeks later, and I notice three new things in the ceiling. One above each register, and one above the doors. They looked odd, and i decided to investigate. Pushed aside the ceiling tiles, and low and behold, there were three cameras? W*F? Traced the wires, found them hooked up to the network switch and the routers that the company had installed. Ripped them out, and called the cops, filed a report for illegal surveillance.
This started a decent legal battle with said company, and with law suits and counter suits, we ended up settling. They sued us for racketeering and organized crime, because of how we ran the stores. The funny thing was that it wasn't actually illegal, they just weren't making as much money as they could have been. They took all the stores away for an amount that was a fraction of what they were worth, and they would agree to drop all the charges that they had against us. (Six months later they begged my dad to take his stores back, with out any royalties or fees. He told em to go f**k their selves, and two of his stores were closed for going bankrupt. )
**TL:DR** Company secretly recorded us in our stores, took stores away, stores ended up going bankrupt.
#20
Oh boy okay so living with my ex, one day he's showing me something on his computer.
Back story, my ex was genius smart with computers and anything that went wrong with it he would instantly need to fix or know the cause what not.
So, he's showing me something probably on reddit, and this popup window comes up from some weird webcam app some s**t. He looks at it a couple minutes and concludes like 'eh dunno whatever' and xs out of it.
Little more back story, was already having huge trust issues with him, knew of many accounts of him looking on my phone and messages and s**t. Never provoked these trust issues, just developed over time to a psycho extent.
Back to the exing out the pop up...I was not buying that, a f*****g webcam pop up and he didn't want to know or wasn't the least bit perturbed by this? Nuhuh. I don't remember where he was if he was at work or something, but I searched the computer for the software name and found a folder containing about 30 videos, one for each day of a straight f*****g month, recording our bedroom (which was either an empty room or me sitting on our bed probably stuffing my face some sort of food) from the time I would get home from work scheduled to stop recording when he would get home from work.
Even though I was just eating in most of them, lol, it was creepy as f**k to see that many videos of myself when I had no f*****g clue it was happening.
tl;dr ex had webcam set up to record our room while he was at work making sure I wasn't f*****g anyone in our bed.
#21
Found out my parents had cameras installed inside their house before I briefly moved in with them. My dad let it slip while drunk that he'd seen someone naked via the camera. (He never made it clear who, but I was creeped the f**k out)
I found a new place to live after that. And stopped talking to my parents for a long while.
#22
My dad used to spy on my PC all the time, from when I was 14 till I moved out at 19. Had every chatlog, every site, videos from me on webcam with girlfriend's and other friends, all this information. I figured it out when I was 17 and found copies of my convos so I started f*****g with him as he would NEVER admit to it.
The 2 best things I did.
1) My brother was into anime furries and he was the favourite, but had no PC so dad didn't spy on him, so I would let him use my computer when I was gone during the day. My dad worked late so he never knew, but for the next few months he never didn't look at me the same. I would subtly leave print outs of My Little Pony around and when he found it he would look visually sick after he found it, guess the videos were graphic.
2) Had an internet relationship and was planning on closing the gap, so paid for a trip to Europe, and had it booked for 3+ months in advance. My dad knew the ENTIRE time. He would drop hints like "Planning on going anywhere soon?" or "So, would you ever want to travel to Europe?" and so on. It went on for 2 months of him just trying to get me to tell him, I would just respond "Do you have spyware on my PC?" and he would deny. It finally got till the NIGHT before I left he just outed "IKNOWABOUTYOURTRIPANDITHINKIT'SABADIDEA" all in about 2 seconds. Little did he know I told my mom when I booked it, everyone knew but him because no one agreed on him trying to spy on what I did. I just asked if he was spying on my PC, and again he said no but asked about the trip so I said no. Next day I called him from Stockholm laughing.
Anyways a year later they fell on hard times and I needed to give up my apartment to help them out, first thing he tried to do was put a flash drive in my PC to install something..
#23
Yeah, my ex decided it'd be cool to make a s*x tape without telling me. We went to bed, started doing the deed, he urged me on top and I obliged. He was kind of a lazy f****r so this didn't seem too weird. Get done, climb off, I go to the bathroom and when I came back he was watching it. I was pretty pissed because he just hadn't asked my permission and it was f*****g disrespectful. If he had asked, we could have gotten some excellent POV footage, would have been great. I took it from him and taped over it. (Yeah, this was about 10 years ago, still using tapes. VHS-C baby.).
#24
When I was in high school, our local movie store had a separate section with nice tanning beds. I went a handful of times to tan, then found out later that the owner had supposedly put cameras in the tanning bed rooms (a lot of women tan naked). I wasn't sure what to believe...until a few months later when the entire business was shut down and he was arrested.
#25
At my last job I took over for a lady who retired from the company after 30 years. She told me she had always suspected our boss was either recording phone calls or had our desks bugged. He would know about things she had said during phone calls to her sister. After she was gone, there were a few occasions where he brought something up I had talked about with a coworker when he was not on the premises. I never did find any recording devices after he got sick and no longer came in.
#26
Yes I did. Growing up, both of my parents were fairly disfunctual. My father an a*****e alcoholic and my mother an emotionally unstable psychological a****r. They were devorced since I was very young, but forced to share custody. They also hated each other more than anything.
The first time I realized I was being regularly recorded was when I was about 7 or 8. My father and step-mother were interrogating me one weekend about what my mother was doing (who are her friends, is she dating anyone, where does she work, where does she go, ect.) and I was getting very emotional and trying to avoid looking at them. That's when I noticed a red light in the bookshelf that was facing me. I started to cry and asked my father what it was, but that only made him angry and violent. I would see that light more than a few more times over the years.
All of my phone calls were recorded by both parents until I was a teenager. I realized this one night when I begged my father to allow me to call my mother. I insisted on being alone in the room as I called her in order to have some privacy (something that was rare for me). After talking to my mother and hearing her hang up, I stayed on the phone for a little to avoid going back to my father. About a minute after my mother hung up, I heard another line click off.
For years I thought it was only my father exhibiting this behavior, but a few years ago I was in the attic at my mother's house digging around some old stuff. I found an unlabeled box filled with tapes and a recorder. Out of curiosity I put one in, only to find my voice of it. All of the tapes were of my phone conversations over the years with various people.
My parents aren't very healthy people...
#27
I didn't actually find a device but was later told I'd been recorded.
I used to babysit for my cousin. Just a favour I would do for her every so often in college. One day my Aunt calls my mum and tells her they'd been using a nanny cam in the front room without telling me. When she found out she was uncomfortable with them not telling me and so told my mum.
I understand parents being cautious but it was just awkward when I took care of the kids again. I was so paranoid of being in their house. I never did anything wrong, obviously as they asked me to keep coming over but its horrible to think of what silly things I could have been doing when I thought I was alone.
#28
My roommate's parents put spyware in her webcam without her knowing; the type where they could turn the camera on and watch her without her knowledge.
They're f*****g insane; they treated her like a s***e and then begged her not to leave when she went to move in with us. her father thought that women for "evil" for "eating the fruit in the garden of eden".
We only found out after my tech-savvy roommate went through and found the spyware, removed it. She actually has a new computer now, and her parents are far far away, so everything is good.
#29
There was outrage in a school in my town when it came to light that there was a CCTV camera in the boys changing rooms, coupled with the fact that the the sports teacher was caught with a shed load of child p**n a couple of years later.
#30
Shortly after high school I was in my first *real* relationship with a guy and things were getting pretty serious. I had just gotten my first apartment and was working a couple side jobs to earn extra cash. Because my schedule was so inconsistent (and he had a serious self esteem issue) he started getting really clingy and questioning about my whereabouts. One day as I was driving a car pulled out in front of me and I slammed on my brakes causing everything to fly forward off the seats. It was then that I noticed a small silver handheld tape recorder slip forward from under my seat. It was on and recording. I was shocked and began to rewind it to listen. There was me singing (very badly) at the top of my lungs to songs on the radio, random road rage outbursts, and me interviewing myself for potential jobs. No cheating. I broke up with him shortly after.
#31
I have a semi-relevant story. I lived in a small brownstone with five units about 17 years ago. One day I see the basement apartment door with police tape all around it. The building owner informed me it was a major d**g bust and that the building had around the clock surveillance for over two weeks. The police had video of everyone going in and out of the building over that period. I like to think I am perceptive, but I never saw a thing. I'm sure I passed concealed people and recording equipment dozens of times and there was never any sort of red flag.
I know this isn't exactly the sort of thing you were looking for, just thought it was interesting how we can be monitored so effectively.
#32
We were never able to prove it, but to this day we still think we were being watched.
About 8 years ago, I shared a first-floor apartment in a converted one-family house with 2 roommates, and the landlord lived above us. Almost immediately after we moved in, I started noticing that whenever I got ready to take a shower, I would hear the sound of someone getting up above me followed by footsteps in the general direction of our bathroom. At first I chalked it up to coincidence, but I tested the theory by "fake-showering," wherein I would get undressed and put a towel on like I was about to take a shower, and the footsteps would immediately start. If I didn't go to the bathroom, they would stop. CREEPY. I had my male roommate, who was knowledgeable in construction, inspect every corner of my bedroom (which had been converted from a dining room) for cameras, recording devices, etc. He didn't find anything suspicious, but did find the fact that I had mirrors in the built-ins, a little disconcerting b/c there was no way to find out what was behind them. Again, CREEPY.
One night I'm home alone and I hear a loud crash. After some searching, I find that the light fixture installed IN our shower (as in... pretend you're showering, now look up. That's where the light was instead of in the middle of the ceiling) had fallen and crashed into the bathtub. Of course I start freaking out, then getting sick to my stomach b/c I think "This is it... I'm going to find a camera and my worst fear will be confirmed." No camera. Nothing in the broken light fixture. Roommate comes home inspects the broken pieces and the fixture still in the wall and finds nothing suspicious (just a very poor DIY electrical job).
April rolls around and we've had the heat off for several weeks, but can still hear the radiators ticking and heat is still coming out. Roommate inspects and it turns out we've been paying for the basement tenant's gas and electric since she moved in. We go upstairs to confront the landlord and notice that one of his computer monitors is displaying live feed of our front porch. Ok, so maybe it's a security measure--or maybe he's keeping track of our movements. A few days later I go outside and pretend to make a phone call while I walk the perimeter of the house. I'm meandering around the yard and the front porch, stopping every so often so it looks like I'm picking at a piece of paint or playing with a window pane, but I'm really looking for cameras. I found one in the yard attached to the flood lights on our back porch and another by the steps to the basement apartment. Again, could be a security measure. Bust still CREEPY.
There were a bunch of other little things that on their own weren't alarming, but when put together seemed *very* suspicious. Like the time the landlord asked my female roommate about a guy I was seeing, someone who was in the apt. once when our landlord was away for the weekend. Or the time he nearly demanded that we use the yard more often, saying that he got the grill for us to use, why don't we ever use it, why don't we ever go back there and "lay in the sun like young kids are supposed to do." Or the time he came downstairs to ask if we needed anything only a few minutes after we realized we were out of eggs, but after we'd already started mixing brownie batter. There were just too many coincidences with that creeper and we ended up moving out 2 months early. To this day I'm still convinced that he had cameras set up.
#33
I found on the USB stick of my ex-girlfriend audio recordings from Skype conversations she had with her then ex-boyfriend. I doubt he knew about it, that she had recorded them.
#34
Someone remotely accessed my computer at work. my mouse cursor started moving on its own and looking at the different programs i had out. I wasn't looking at anything i wasn't supposed to. just some news sites and work related programs. I'd fight the cursor to go to microsoft word and i typed out hello. then whoever it was disconnected. I never found out who it was. my manager never mentioned anything to me about it. Kind of creepy.
#35
A few months ago I had a really cool babysitting gig. Gorgeous house and had all.the food you'd want. One morning the baby was still sleeping and I was so hungry I was like shaky..ya know? So I quickly cooked a eggo and scarfed it down probably the most gross way possible and I glance in front of me and on their black counter under a corner cabinet was a black camera. I was mortified. I also found a white camera on their white window sill behind white blinds. I was a little creeped but more embarrassed about my eggo eating.
#36
My legally obsessed roommate who was about 30 years my senior (maybe irrelevant) would record household discussions in case they turned to arguments to give himself legal leverage. Typically a nice guy who went out of his way to help others but man did he love his settlements. Currently unemployed and living on disability..
#37
Back in college, Apple's Remote Desktop was a relatively new concept. At this time it was a standalone application rather than an OS-level feature. Any computer could be controlled without software, but controlling required a retail copy of ARD. I used to open Remote Desktop and rummage around my university's network to see if anyone had inadvertently enabled monitoring/control without a password. With a few thousand computers connected to the network at any time, there were always a few.
I never did anything specifically malicious with it. I'd just pop in on whatever paper they were typing at the time and start writing my own paragraphs. Occasionally I'd turn the volume all the way up and start blasting their most reprehensible music.
After a bit of fun I'd type out instructions on their screen to describe how to password protect the access I'd taken advantage of.
Ah, college. Nothing like some potential massive invasion of privacy for a good laugh.
What do you think ?
LakotaWolf (she/her) 3 hours ago
When I was in my 20s, after my dad's accident, one of my dad's caregivers filmed me while I was taking a shower. Our shower has a tiny window high up on the wall (like 8 feet up) for venting steam. Apparently the caregiver got on a stepladder to film me through the window and got a very explicit video. He was also our renter and rented a room in one of my mom's properties. My sister went to the house to wait for a repairman one day and SAW the VHS tape on the table, labeled with my name. She watched it and saw what was on it and told my mom and I. My mother did NOT fire the caregiver nor did she evict him from her property. She allowed him to stay employed with us and renting from us for over a decade. She chose this guy over her own daughter. For all I know, that VHS tape of me is still out there or posted online somewhere. This kind of thing is par for the course for my mother's behavior, btw, and nope, I have never forgiven her. But I do feel extremely violated.
Kristiina Männiste 1 hour ago
Im angry at them on your behalf. If it helps - people who watch such videos are not right in the head and not worth caring about. So, the human equivalent of a greenhouse whitefly saw you - It takes NOTHING from your value.
Load More Replies... Kristiina Männiste 5 hours ago
Somewhere in the vast web exists a video of my crazy ex on his knees begging me to marry him and me politely turning him down and telling him to get out of my office (yep came to harass me at work). I had no idea about the existence of the video, but apparently the loon posted in on his Facebook (did I mention he was crazy) and it got shared. How I found out - hooked up with a guy who was Facebook friends with my ex and he mentioned the video. I had by then blocked the crazy on everything so I did not know. I feel a bit bad, that I did not notice the filming, but heck it was not "I" that went to harass someone and got turned down. And I happened to wear a clingy hot pink dress that day, that actually looked good on me (a miracle!), so the audience at least saw a pretty dress amongst all the cringe.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 3 hours ago
When I was in my 20s, after my dad's accident, one of my dad's caregivers filmed me while I was taking a shower. Our shower has a tiny window high up on the wall (like 8 feet up) for venting steam. Apparently the caregiver got on a stepladder to film me through the window and got a very explicit video. He was also our renter and rented a room in one of my mom's properties. My sister went to the house to wait for a repairman one day and SAW the VHS tape on the table, labeled with my name. She watched it and saw what was on it and told my mom and I. My mother did NOT fire the caregiver nor did she evict him from her property. She allowed him to stay employed with us and renting from us for over a decade. She chose this guy over her own daughter. For all I know, that VHS tape of me is still out there or posted online somewhere. This kind of thing is par for the course for my mother's behavior, btw, and nope, I have never forgiven her. But I do feel extremely violated.
Kristiina Männiste 1 hour ago
Im angry at them on your behalf. If it helps - people who watch such videos are not right in the head and not worth caring about. So, the human equivalent of a greenhouse whitefly saw you - It takes NOTHING from your value.
Load More Replies... Kristiina Männiste 5 hours ago
Somewhere in the vast web exists a video of my crazy ex on his knees begging me to marry him and me politely turning him down and telling him to get out of my office (yep came to harass me at work). I had no idea about the existence of the video, but apparently the loon posted in on his Facebook (did I mention he was crazy) and it got shared. How I found out - hooked up with a guy who was Facebook friends with my ex and he mentioned the video. I had by then blocked the crazy on everything so I did not know. I feel a bit bad, that I did not notice the filming, but heck it was not "I" that went to harass someone and got turned down. And I happened to wear a clingy hot pink dress that day, that actually looked good on me (a miracle!), so the audience at least saw a pretty dress amongst all the cringe.
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