Hi people.

I suspect my office might be bugged. How should I detect hidden cams and mics?

There are camera and radio detecting devices available.

Thank you for your thorough answer.
The bad actors I worry about aren't the employers.

Check smoke detectors, clocks, plants near desks, anything that's always been there and nobody questions.

To add to this as someone who has seen behind the curtain of how much of this tech is set up, lights are a common hiding place for cameras. Exit signs, parking lot lights, motion sensor lights, and the like. These are unfortunately also very difficult to detect by design, since they are expected to consume electricity, are almost always closed circuit with data wires parallel to the power wires, are practically impossible to observe in low light, and generate some heat even without any included surveillance equipment.

deleted by moderator

Hmmm.... Someone didn't want the truth out there....

One of the owners thinks one of the business partners that comes in their office might have bugged the office. They get lots of unattended time there, and they're a shady and bad person overall so it's probable.

Should we ask the mods why they removed it?
It was a very good answer!

Looks like that user’s comments were all mod deleted. Maybe it’s a bot account? No idea

It was the account that posted about Huntarrr yesterday or so and suggested measures against something like that which wouldn't have been effective in the slightest. Everyone suspected them to be an AI account.

More likely your phone is listening.

Hire a private investigator that owns all of the tools

I don't know if it was a bot account or not. Maybe? If it was, I got fooled by it once. It replied to one of my posts in another thread. I felt the reply was insightful and made a valid point. Of course, it could still have been a bot. Or maybe a person falsely accused as a bot? I legit have no idea.

I worry that over time it will get harder and harder to detect bots by content, and attempts to do that based on meta-info will further erode privacy. It always risks sweeping up real humans. Especially those with a more formal writing style. I have changed my own writing style to try to avoid that. As somebody on the spectrum I always wrote with a very bullet-list style, sometimes even using sub-heading in longer posts to structure them. That is exactly what bots do. So I now I don't!

There are "LLM detectors", but those have poor accuracy. then there are "humanizers" who try to modify writing to avoid triggering the LLM detectors. It's a mess.

Get a FLIR capable camera and scan for heat sources

Ulefone Armor are relatively cheap phones with that capability, and they're fun too

Not for the actors I'm currently worried about.
My phone is definitely bugged by govt. And being monitored but this is a more direct threat right now and the actors aren't the type to bug a phone.

Don't know such person.

They advertise and are professionally licensed. Many specialize in counter-surveillance.

Other then the advice to "look", theres not much you can do.

To do this in a way that will locate well-hidden devices you should hire a professional who owns the right tools.

Otherwise, install kismet and monitor for unknown BLE and wifi signals and use video surveillance to detect people attempting to remove passive devices.

You won't be able to locate devices that use other wireless technology without specialized tools.

If this is a serious worry then hire a professional

Amazon has some no name brands for not insane money. But used you can get actual flir stuff for pretty cheap. Especially those phone attachment cameras. Just know as “technology progresses” they might stop working with new OS versions.

Fing does this if you’re a premium user.

Lemmy ML admins instance banned it under AI account so looks like it.

Smoke detector cams are unlikely to be used by any professional company installing them, though that only stops people already following the law. I only mention it since my old camera and security company actually used to keep some lying around, with the story being that they became extremely illegal due to smoke detectors needing to function as smoke detectors or the fire marshal will give you a really bad year

did you find something?