After a breakup: when an ex may still have access to your phone and accounts

Relationships leave digital threads behind. Over months or years you may have shared your phone PIN, your location, a photo album, a streaming account, a laptop and a family plan. When it ends, most of those threads stay connected until someone cuts them. For many people that’s simply untidy. For some it means an ex can still see where they are, read their messages or browse their photos. This page is for both, starting with safety.

First: are you safe?

If your ex has been controlling, threatening or violent, think before you change anything. Cutting off their access is noticeable: location stops updating, an album vanishes, a laptop is signed out. Some people react badly to losing control. An advocate can help you decide what to change, in what order, and how to stay safe while you do. Contact them from a device your ex has never had access to.

If you might need evidence later, take screenshots of what’s being shared and keep copies somewhere they can’t reach before you make changes. See keeping evidence of harassment.

What to do now

1. Change your phone PIN. Choose one your ex has never seen, of six digits or more. Remove any fingerprints or faces you added for them.

2. Change your main account password. Your phone account reaches your photos, messages, backups and location from any device. Use a new password, used nowhere else, and turn on two-step verification. Check the recovery email and phone number are yours.

3. Remove devices you don’t recognize. On iPhone, open Settings, tap your name and scroll to the device list. On Android, go to your account’s Security & sign-in, then Manage all devices. Remove a shared laptop, their phone or anything unfamiliar. See checking which devices are signed in.

4. Stop location sharing. Check your phone’s find-my-device and location sharing, map apps, messaging apps and any family-tracking app. Each has its own list of who can see you.

5. Review shared albums. Remove them from albums you share, turn off album links and stop auto-adding albums. Copies they already saved stay with them. See who can see your shared albums.

6. Leave or rebuild family groups. Family plans can share purchases, locations and albums.

7. Change the passwords they might know: email, social media, banking, streaming, and any password you saved on a shared computer.

On iPhone: Safety Check

Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Safety Check gathers people, sharing, apps, devices and passwords in one place. Manage Sharing & Access lets you go person by person; Emergency Reset stops all sharing at once. A Quick Exit button closes it instantly. See iPhone Safety Check explained.

If they seem to know too much

If your ex knows things that sharing settings can’t explain, such as what you’ve texted or where you’ve been without location sharing, there may be monitoring software on your phone. Don’t remove it in a hurry. Read how to check for stalkerware on Android and talk to an advocate first.

What doesn’t help

• Only changing your phone PIN. Your accounts can still be reached from their devices.
• Blocking them and stopping there. Blocking stops messages; it doesn’t sign them out of anything.
• Confronting them about access. It can warn them and escalate things.

Where a vault helps

Photos that live in your gallery are reachable through every door above: your phone, your account, shared albums and synced devices. Silo, coming soon to iPhone and Android, keeps imported photos encrypted on the phone under its own PIN, with no account, so they aren’t part of any shared album or signed-in device list. Pick a Silo PIN your ex has never seen.