Art Bowker: Cyberstalking, Spyware, and Locking Down Your Devices

Somebody reads every text message you send without ever touching your phone. Art Bowker worked a case where that was exactly what happened. The person had the password to the cell phone account, and the carrier's own website did the rest.

Art Bowker publishes as Art the Cyber Safety Guy. He spent his career investigating cyber crimes and supervising people convicted of them, including a cyber stalker and people who turned technology on a former partner. He founded the Ohio chapter of the High Technology Crime Investigation Association and went on to lead the organization, which is where he met Todd Shipley, a former Reno detective who ran that department's cyber crime unit. The two of them co-authored Investigating Internet Crimes and, more recently, Surviving a Cyber Attack, which is written for ordinary people rather than investigators and carries separate chapters on protecting children, older relatives, and small businesses.

Art begins by placing stalking on a continuum that runs upward from harassment, defined by someone actively working out how to follow your movements and make your life miserable. Technology does not change the motive, it removes the limits: no phone book, no sitting outside your house, and it runs around the clock with a record they can go back and study later. He and Lisa then narrow to the case this audience deals with, where the person doing it used to share your life. That is a different problem entirely from a stranger, because passwords were shared or are guessable, and the devices have already been in their hands.

The practical material is the reason to stay for the whole thing. What law enforcement needs before it can prosecute, which is a documented instruction to stop and then no engagement of any kind afterward, including replying to ask why. What doxing is, including a call placed to bring an armed emergency response to your address. AirTags dropped into a bag or fixed to a car. A neighbor's doorbell camera turned into surveillance because the neighbor never locked down the account. Cameras found inside a smoke detector. When to hand a phone to a forensic examiner, when to simply replace the phone and change carriers, and where a private investigator advertising anti-surveillance sweeps fits in. Art also explains how to change your passwords on the way out without announcing that you are doing it, and warns that a message telling you your account has been compromised is often the attack itself.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Where harassment ends and stalking begins, and what makes a case prosecutable
• Why an ex who shared your life is a different problem from a stranger
• The first things to change when you separate, including your phone account password
• How someone reads your messages without ever touching your phone
• What doxing and swatting are, and why they get treated as emergencies
• AirTags, hidden cameras, and when to bring in a professional sweep
• When to hand a phone to a forensic examiner, and when to just replace it
• Social engineering: why a "your account was hacked" message may be the attack

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Stalking, cyberstalking, and the continuum from harassment
4:00 Art's background, and the two books
6:00 Who does this, and why being told to stop doesn't stop them
10:00 What law enforcement needs before it can act, and what doxing is
13:00 Is this a gendered issue?
14:30 Phones, passwords, and the ex who already had access
18:00 A neighbor's doorbell camera, and hidden recording devices
19:30 AirTags, forensic checks, and when to just replace the phone
21:00 Bugged rooms, smoke-detector cameras, and professional sweeps
23:00 Isolating your technology before you leave, and social engineering

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.