Auntie SparkNotes: I Think My Neighbor Is Spying On Me

Dear Auntie,

Before we begin, I would like to say that I live in an area of town where the houses are old, close together, and walls thin.

Following that, I have this neighbor.

She’s been trouble since she moved in a few months ago. She had (and still does have) a huge temper, and would often scream at her parents at the top of her lungs for the minorest of things (using her computer at the wrong time, for example). That’d be something in and out of itself, but she’d also be hypocritical about it (screaming at me through the walls for doing things like chewing gum or typing). However, after a few weeks of this and me ignoring her, she finally moved to a different room and quieted down. I could still hear her, but less so. Things were better from there.

Mostly.

A few months back, I was looking at porn and suddenly heard “Ew, that’s freaky/you’re a freak” coming through the walls. Kind of strange, but being that she would frequently talk to her friends loudly and about sex, no big deal. Weird that it happened exactly while I was looking at porn, but whatever. I thought she was talking to them.

Then, I was watching a queer video, and suddenly heard “Ugh, she’s still watching that gay s**t.” Kind of strange to hear being that I had the speaker down low, but again, crap walls. I figured she somehow must’ve heard it anyway.

There were a few other things that set off my suspicions. Things I heard her say that were just a little to close to what I was searching or looking at at the time (hearing “she’s still reading that?” when reading a story online, for instance). But she’d also be very vague and never use my name, so while I was still suspicious, I figured it was probably just coincidences.

Then, about a month ago, my neighbor was on another one of her rants when I decided to Google “whiny neighbor” (not out of any suspicion she was on the network, just to vent). Well immediately after that, I heard her talk to her father and say how she feels like “can’t talk about anything anymore” with her father replying “Why do you care what she thinks of you?”

After that, I decided to conduct a short test. I signed off the Wifi network and typed an insult into my phone (I think “crazy neighbor whining” or something like that, similar to the original) while on my phone’s data. Nothing happened. I signed back into the network and IMMEDIATELY heard loud screaming from next door, including (what I’m pretty sure was) “How can she f***ing hear me?”

So the questions I’m really asking here are:

1) Is what I think is happening happening? My wifi network is password protected but the walls between us are super thin and I do remember giving my friend the wifi password verbally a few months back.

2) If what I think is happening happening, what can I do to stop it? Visiting her in person might work, being that her family seems reasonable, and she seems a lot more cowardly in person than she is through a wall.

3) If changing the wifi password would help, how do I explain this to my family without sounding paranoid?

4) Am I being too paranoid? This could all be a massive coincidence, but I doubt it.

And I don’t blame you, Sparkler. Based on the evidence you’ve collected, it certainly seems like your neighbor has opened a sneaky little window into your digital activities.

And yet, a massive coincidence is almost certainly all that it is. Because as it turns out (i.e., after Auntie SparkNotes showed your letter to a friend-of-a-friend who also happens to be an internet security expert), it would take straight-up hacker supervillain levels of digital trickery for your neighbor to actually be spying on your internet use this way. So unless she’s an evil computer genius in addition to being an unhinged screamer—or unless she’s somehow overheard you giving out your Google password, which would give her access to not just your saved search history, but your email account and any linked social media—then it all comes down to your first question.

What you think is happening is not, in fact, happening. (With the aforementioned caveats, i.e., if you know your neighbor is crazy-good at coding, write back and let us know.)

What is happening, in all likelihood, is a random confluence of events combining to create the illusion that your neighbor is lurking on your network like some kind of omnipotent ghost in the machine. For one thing, you have perfectly legitimate reasons to be nervous about being eavesdropped-upon. You know she’s on the other side of that wall; you know she can hear your every move; and you know, from experience, that even the sound of your chewing can provoke an angry outburst on her part.

But more importantly, of course you’re nervous about her monitoring and judging you, because that’s exactly what you’re doing to her. Not that you’re doing it maliciously, of course—you can’t help being annoyed by the sound of her ranting any more than you can help overhearing it to begin with—but it still creates a dynamic in which you’re basically primed to be hypersensitive to (and maybe even a little bit paranoid about) any suggestion that she might be responding to your behavior in the same way that you’re responding to hers. Add in a few ambiguously-timed, overheard comments that your pattern-seeking brain can use to reinforce your fears of being spied-upon (plus one incident in which she very possibly was sneering about the “gay s**t” she could hear you watching through the walls) and it’s no surprise that you reached the alarming conclusion that she’d somehow hacked your network—despite the fact that there was probably plenty of evidence not supporting that theory. (For instance: It seems awfully unlikely that your neighbor would be complaining to her father about your internet search history, seeing as it would prompt some uncomfortable questions about how she gained access to that information.)

That said, it’s also an easy thing to close off the possibility entirely, by simply changing your passwords—not to your family’s wireless, but to your own personal stuff. If this girl were seeing your search history, it would have to be because she’s in your account; having the WiFi password doesn’t give her anything but an internet connection (which means that “test” you conducted, damning as it seems, was meaningless.) And as for the network, off the top of my head, you could always tell your folks that the connection seems slow and you want to change the password just in case the neighbors are piggybacking on your router… if for no other reason than that bad neighbors do not deserve free internet.

But apart from that, the best way to deal with your neighbor is the same way she should be dealing with you: to steer clear of your shared wall, to use headphones for any video-watching or music-listening you don’t want overheard, and to keep up the polite pretense that neither one of you has ever listened in on the other’s private biz.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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