Girlfriend was given a free PC from a friend who upgraded to a new pre-built. I told her I'd take a look and do cable management.
Two things: F*** non modular PSUs and I hate AIO coolers. The HDD mounting bracket is a dam of electric spaghetti because I don't have anywhere else to put the extra 900 feet of power cabling.
Hey Reddit, apologies for any formatting problems. On mobile.
So, about a month ago, I found a small, black puck duct taped to a bookshelf in my dining room. Can provide photos if needed, but it's similar to a magsafe charger in design, but a little smaller and with a switch, red/blue LED and a reset pinhole button. After using Google lens and asking some folks, figured out it's a voice-activated voice recorder. It was loosely duct taped to the inner wall of my one bookshelf. It was placed there on a Wednesday, at 715 to 745 am. I found it the following Saturday morning while cleaning.
I know it's a voice recorder because I plugged it into a spare, dummy PC I keep airgapped from the home network for hardware testing. It had no IP connection or outgoing network ability. But it DID have audio files matching the previous couple days before I found it. Notably, a small dinner which I invited my girlfriend's sister over to eat with us. I had about half a dozen 2 hour long audio files on an internal drive, which I've since copied. I now have the device itself held in my gun safe behind a key and passcode.
Now, I let it go as there didn't seem to be any way to follow up. I chalked it up to some weird coincidence because I likely forgot to lock my front door after hosting a friend from Delaware. My bad, lesson learned. Nothing stolen, so I got off light. However, while waiting for a package to get delivered over the weekend, someone in an orange safety vest and unmarked white van got out and was recording or taking pictures of my front door/porch. She stayed pretty consciously out of range of my Ring camera I borrowed and aimed at my front door. My main question, is there anything advice you can offer to help either catch or dissuade who's doing this?
Edit: If my reply/comment changes a bunch, I apologize. I have potent ass ADHD, am probably on mobile, and immediately forget what you asked when I go to respond.
Edit 2: To answer some questions I see pop up.
The girlfriend angle was one I seriously considered. Thing is, she's a big fan of Dunkin and gets it every morning before work, and sends me what she gets. She was over the night before the listening device was planted. I went back and checked. She sent me her Dunkin order at 6:57 am, and the listening device (which has no operable mechanism outside an on/off switch on the outside) started recording at 7:32 am that day. I have asked her directly, and as a long time horror buff, her look of sheer fear and discomfort at the idea of a listening device is hard to fake. Additionally, I looked through the house, checked a bunch of spots and then asked her to help and I kept an eye on her while she was. Nothing suspicious. Additionally, during that time we were openly polyamorous and weren't being jealous or anything.
It is not something that pops up from carbon monoxide, as I have functional detectors and really, really good ventilation. I 3D print with resin, and have 8 very large windows that do open.
The recorder was a Chinese knock off of the Knight Electronics 64gb hidden voice recorder. This is the closest I can find on Amazon.
I am likely not going to the police due to a very similar event occurring to a prior by one of her current partners (he went a little screwy and started tracking her and placing bugs in her car). She went to the cops and they did nothing, and when that partner turned himself in, they said "well, it's resolved now, so nothing to be done." Y'know, classic cop shit. Additionally, at the risk of divulging my location, my local legal system is kinda known as corrupt due to a certain Kids 4 Cash scandal.
The sister of my girlfriend also has midstage MS. She can barely move on her own, let alone plant a device in a building shed never been to before.
The landlord was an option, but I knew him prior to this. He's the grandfather of my ex-girlfriend. Which, typically, would make him more suspicious. But this man is in his mid/late 60s, barely knows how to operate a T9 phone and goes to bed at 8pm. He also works at that time, and doesn't have a key to my apartment. There is no maintenance man, the landlord's the only person involved with the property.
My main theory is my upstairs neighbor. He's a bit of a creep, has access to my front door and knows when my car is gone and my girlfriend's car is gone, and knows they're tied to my apartment. Additionally, he's a security guard for the local college and his shift ends right about when that was placed, and lines up with the heavy boot sounds that head off the beginning of the recordings.
Edit 3: I've since set up a ring camera aimed at my front door. I don't have any others presently, as I'm pretty anti-surveillance. (Hell, I've taken and taught classes on counter surveillance) But I'll likely look at snagging a few small nanny cam style set ups and link them to my PC, and feed it to a remote viewer.
Edit 4: Remembered I can use imgur. IRL photo of the device And it connected to my "paranoia PC" showing the files. . Dates are incorrect in the system, as stated.
Edit 5: My partner being a possibility was playing on my mind a lot. So I called her work and explained the whole situation, the bosses and her coworkers also know me. I stated I didn't need to know anything beyond when she punched in on that date. In short, it was 7:24, which checks out for the distance between Dunkin and her job. She's a pre school teacher, so she's state regulated and highly monitored. So yeah, she's accounted for from 6:40 to then as traveling. She's also down me her Google maps history (which her car is linked to), so she's all good.
Edit 6: For the fellow opsec/tech nerds concerned about me connecting a random device with a USB connection: I keep a separate, airgapped PC made out of DDR3/LGA1150 era parts, with a very easily removed 256gb SATA SSD. It has no wifi adaptor, and must be connected to any network physically, and even then I run a virtual machine on it for testing. I have a small stash of fully wiped old laptop hard drives from old ewaste salvage that I use in the event it needs to be reset. I have a dummy install of Dev edition of windows 11, hence why the one screenshot has onedrive listed. I don't bother tweaking file directories and settings for something I may just incinerate later. I call it my paranoia PC in comments because I thought it was a funny comment. I recognize that what's effectively a usb drive with a microphone is a super high malware risk. I designed and built this specfic machine to be disposable. The case is the most expensive part, at $200 (fractal Terra, if you're interested. I like the vintage radio look, plus it's portable). Additionally, the hard drive that I keep for running it as a gaming server is kept separate, labelled and alongside its own dedicated RAM for that purpose, since RAM can be a bit of a sleeper host for malware. As I've stated in comments, I am pretty competent with most IT/commtech.
Edit 7: My upstairs neighbor continues to be my primary suspicion. His partner has recently mostly recovered from a massive stroke, and it's fundamentally changed her behavior. While he is super creepy, she's gotten a lot worse since her stroke. I'm very, very loath to say that as I understand how debilitating a stroke can be. But she's begun hanging outside my back door, walking back and forth past my windows playing music on her phone (this is a shared alley, but she never does it when the windows are closed). The two of them make my skin crawl in a weird, reflexive way I don't get often. And the examples of people that have done that to me are pretty wild instances, mostly from doing security, installation for DISH or when I was an RSO.
I've ordered some hidden cameras that I'll be installing over the weekend. If you're interested in seeing my janky ass, 5-minute paint mock up: Here's a link. The red triangles are doors, windows are red boxes, rooms are labeled for reference, green dots are where I'll be putting the hidden cameras, and the green outlines are the FOV of them. Also, I'm not concerned about the windows as they actually have long standing, decorative bars over them.