I think someone is spying on me, what do I do?

I took my MacBook in to get fixed, and since then I have noticed some odd behavior on my laptop. I have seen things like my screen randomly jumping to a different screen I have open, other times I will suddenly see a box pop up on my screen that says “Press Fn to exit full screen” but if I press Fn it doesn’t do anything… and the other day when I went to put my password in to log into my laptop I saw an orange light on that was located in the top right corner of my screen. Then I noticed a message on the top utility bar that said “your screen is being observed”. For that particular instance, I turned my computer off and on again before logging in, made sure I didn’t see that stuff anymore before logging in. Anyway, I have been suspecting someone spying on me for a while now but that time made me really think it. So I have been investigating a bit and came across something called “Thunderbolt” that is on my laptop so I did some Googling about it and it says it is used for moving files and sharing stuff. There are a bunch of these on my laptop, 2 of them say “Thunderbolt Bridge” but the rest say “1, 2, 3, 4… 8”. I could think that the ones that say “bridge” go to my Adobe product suite but am not sure about the rest. I saw on a thread that someone could spy on you using Thunderbolt but they would have had access to the physical laptop… and I did notice my laptop acting this way after taking it in to be worked on, so, I am feeling nervous that I am being spied on.


If anyone here has used Thunderbolt, could you give me some clarity as to what this could be about?

how do I know for sure someone did this and is spying on my laptop?

what should I do once I confirm that I am being spied on? Should I call the cops?

MacBook Pro 13″

Posted on Dec 3, 2023 7:29 PM

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1 reply

Dec 4, 2023 2:07 AM in response to Crazygrl4ever

The Thunderbolt bridge is just a connecting thing in your Mac that features Thunderbolt ports. The bridge is nessecary for the Thunderbolt protocol to work. This has nothing to do with spying on you! The USB C ports on your Mac (if you have a newer Mac) the Thunderbolt protocol and it Is there, even if you don't use it. Older Macs have a separate thunderbolt port


Macs are really difficult to hack, so unless you're a top notch target you're most likely not being observed. The message "your screen is being observed" can be caused by a piece of malware that is doing precisely for what it is designed: scaring you into thinking that you're spied on.


You can download the free version of malwarebytes to scan your Mac for any potential malware

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I think someone is spying on me, what do I do?

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