BOISE - Can a cell phone destroy your privacy or even put your life at risk?

One Treasure Valley woman says yes.

"Please believe me - this is going on," the woman said, who asked to be referred to as Patti. "This is real."

The Boise woman says she was living in California when her cell phone started doing "funny things." It would turn itself on after she turned it off - ringing and buzzing for no reason.

Then one day it talked to her.

"(It was) a conversation I had the day before, or an hour ago," Patti said. "This went on, at the time, every single day. My phone was being remotely controlled and it was very disturbing."

Patti said she realized her phone was spying on her. And someone was using her cell to make her miserable.

"Someone's leaving me messages to upset me," she said "(They're trying) to scare me."

Danny Smith, a Boise-based private eye, says he's had clients with the same problem. Having worked LA homicide with 21 years of experience, Smith is no stranger to secret surveillance techniques. When he first heard about phone spy technology, Smith said he didn't buy it.

"At first I was very skeptical," Smith said. "There's no such technology."

But, he did his homework and now he's a believer.

"It lets someone pretty much put their hands around your throat and leave them there all the time," Smith said.

Patti says she's gone through 45 phones and now refuses to have one when it's so easy to take a phone over.

A simple Google search for spy phones comes up with thousands of hits, hundreds of websites and about a dozen products that will hack your phone.

It took just a few minutes to find a program that promised to completely invade a cell phone's privacy. Within a few minutes a phone at the CBS 2 Eyewitness News became big brother. Once the phone was activated, the downloaded program sent a report online of calls, text messages and email.

It even alerted incoming calls so they could be listened to.

"I was telling the truth," Patti said. "No one believed me."

So, what do you do if you think your phone is bugged? Smith says, for starters, it's illegal, so call authorities.

"Most of the laws not only prohibit the use of such technology and devices, but also the possession, sale and manufacturing of such devices," Smith said.

And the next step, he says, is to take the phone out of commission - entirely.

"You have to take safeguards," he said. "You have to realize that phone is suspect No.1. Whenever you're having a private conversation, turn the phone off, take the battery out, disable it completely."

Even though she's long since ditched her cell phone, Patti says it's been a lot harder to restore her sense of well-being.

"It's horrible," she says. "This is the next generation of stalking."

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