You can tell your husband is hiding something from you. You’ve been together long enough to notice the change in his behavior when something’s up. If you’ve got reasons to believe that he owns a secret cell phone, he probably does. But how to find out if your husband has a secret cell phone without raising an alarm?
Secrets and lies can ruin the strongest relationship. People can have more than one cell phone for many reasons. If your husband has a work phone issued by his company, there’s nothing wrong with it as long as you know about it. The problem lies within keeping it from you. If he gets a phone that he uses to maintain secret social media accounts, to communicate with someone he’s secretly seeing, or to use it in a ‘Breaking bad’ kinda way, you need to get to the bottom of this.
You can always just talk to him. But, if he really is cheating on you, he’d never admit to having a secret cell phone. On the flip side, if he doesn’t own one you’ll come off as a paranoid wife who spies on him. He might develop trust issues because of that and it might ruin your marriage. So, keep that in mind before you start your mission.
Now without further ado, I’m here to guide you on how to find out if your husband has a secret cell phone.
The Non-Technical Way
Let’s start off with the basics. Is your husband being way too secretive? Does he keep his briefcase or work bag out of reach? Does he become irritable if you’re around that? Is there a place where you frequently find him without any reason? Head out on your solo old-fashioned search mission and look around.
Check his closet. Notice where he goes right after coming home. He might stash the cell phone in the bathroom, garage, or anywhere in the house. Pay attention to where he spends a lot of time or goes often. Search through his car as well whenever you get the chance to do it without making him suspicious.
Make sure you don’t tip him off. If he gets the wind of your suspicion, he’ll place it somewhere you’d never find.
If you’re here, I’m assuming you have reason to believe something is up with your marriage. Have you taken the marriage assessment quiz so I can help figure it the root of the problem?
Check His Mail and Bills
Not that it’s ideal but it’s time to snoop on his laptop and phone. Check his emails and look for bills from phone companies. Also, are there emails with verification codes? Read them. They’re signs that he logged into a new device. But it can also be the case that he forgot a password and needed the code.
If you have a reason to think he’s cheating – you might want to see if you can find your husband on dating sites at the same time. You might find payments or emails from something like Tinder.
However, if he didn’t go through the hassle of creating a new email account for his secret social media accounts on his secret cell phone, you might just find what you were looking for. What does his browser history look like? How about his social media activity?
Did he suddenly go MIA from all social media platforms because he spends his time on the new ones? Has he been searching for stuff related to some mobile phone operators that don’t look relevant? Casually mention those mobile operators’ name and talk about switching to them just to see his reaction.
Go through his mail before he does and look for anything shady. He might not use your home address if he’s already thought it through. But, you can’t confront him without concrete evidence. so, keep looking for it. If he leaves the phone at work, you may try paying a surprise visit and search there as well.
Look for a Second Sim
If your spouse knows that you’re on to him, he might take his secret sim out and use that on his regular cell phone instead of sneaking around. His plan might be to act normal until you’ve backed off. Check his phone for another sim and call your phone from that number.
If you don’t know that number and it matches the one you found from a reverse phone number lookup, looks like you need to have a conversation with your husband. If you find just the sim by chance, insert that into your phone and look at the saved contacts.
If there’s just one contact, it seems pretty obvious what your husband’s been up to. But I’d still suggest you dial the number to be sure who that is before accusing your husband of cheating on you.
Wait for Him to Drop the Ball
If your husband isn’t too careful he might forget to call you from his regular cell number and mistakenly dial you up from his secret number. He might make up an excuse and say it’s a colleague’s number he used since his battery died. Use that phone number and do a lookup to be certain if that’s actually his colleague’s number or not.
Tell him that you tried that number again because you needed to reach him and nobody picked up. See his reaction. If he gets worked up over it or acts defensive, ask him if it’s his secret cell number. Call that number in front of him and if it’s his number his actions will give that away.
Having a secret phone doesn’t establish that you’ve got a cheating spouse living under the same roof as you. He might have an affair, of course. But, he might have got other explanations for having that cell phone as well. Try communicating with him. You have every right to be mad at him but try talking to him in a calm way.
Figure out if he’s having an emotional affair or it’s full-blown infidelity. Take some time off to figure out what you want to do about it. Having a secret cell phone surely means he is hiding something. Figuring that out is more important than finding the cell phone itself.
Don’t accuse your husband of cheating on you just because you think he’s got a secret cell phone. Look for other signs and evidence before you talk to him. You don’t want to push him away by appearing to be a neurotic wife even when he had it coming.
The Technical Way
Watching The Phone You Know About
I’ve covered apps to spy on your spouse’s phone before but this does require you to know about the phone. If you have a reason to think he’s keeping a separate phone, watching the one you know about might give you some answers.
Do a Reverse Phone Number Lookup
You can do it using his regular cell number. Put his number and any numbers under his name will pop up for you to be sure if he has got a secret sim card on his secret phone. There are quite a few phone number lookup tools. You can start by using this one called “BeenVerified“.
This tool will give you details not only about your husband’s secret cell phone number but also about his secret social media platforms. Once you find out that secret number, you can use the ‘track my phone’ option to know your husband’s and his secret cell phone’s whereabouts.
You can also try using ‘PeopleLooker‘ to find information that’s not available on a simple google search. You can search for your husband’s full name and state. Sure there are more people with the same name as your husband. That’s why you need to filter your search and when you think you found the one aka your spouse, get all the contact information you need.
Sounds complicated? You’re not comfortable going to that length yet? Try a simple Facebook search and see if you can find his other numbers listed on his secret Facebook profile. He might not use the same username. So try using more and more filters to narrow down your search results.
Go Through His File Backups and Locations
If your husband’s been using the same file backup service for the secret phone as well, you’ll find traces of his files and photos even if he deletes them. There are options to recover deleted files and a lot of people forget to permanently delete the files.
You can check his regular phone for recent pictures and if there are more on his iCloud or dropbox, you might get a clue what’s happening with him lately. Doesn’t matter how careful your husband is, he might slip at times. If he forgets to delete the files from the backup service and only deletes from his phone, it’ll still be there for you to see.
Using GPS, check your husband’s recent location history. Has he been where he said he was? Is there a frequent visit to a certain place? Doesn’t matter if you’re a Blackberry, Android, or iPhone user, there are ways to find out where he’s been going these days. Try Google maps and you’ll get to see his previous destinations easily by tapping timeline. Then choose the dates and there you’ll find it.
If you’re an iPhone user, try Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations to know where he’s been frequently going. For these options to work, location settings need to be turned on. If your husband is being extra cautious and has been regularly deleting them or keeping them turned off, it won’t work.
Try Connecting Bluetooth to the Secret Phone
Your husband is not too worried about getting caught since he keeps his secret cell phone on silent. But, he might not remember to turn the Bluetooth off on his second phone and you can take advantage of that. Turn on Bluetooth on your phone and search for nearby devices. Since you don’t know exactly where he kept it, roam around the house.
You’ll see a list of devices around you. You know how many people live in your house and what their device names are. If there’s an extra one with an unknown name when you don’t have a guest or any outsider at home, bingo! You might’ve detected his secret phone. For this option to work, his connectivity settings need to be in your favor.
If he keeps the phone switched off when he’s at home or on ‘airplane mode’ with the Bluetooth turned off, you’d have to find other ways to pin his secret mobile down.
