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Sleuthing Parents Top Spy Tips & Tricks for Ultimate Family Safety

Advice for Parents Wondering How to Track Their Daughter’s Phone Without Her Knowing

Daughter with a phone

In an increasingly online world, it’s natural that your daughter relies on her phone to communicate with her friends and, of course, with you as her parent.

Now, if your experience as a parent is anything like mine, you’ll know that smart devices can be a blessing and a curse. They can be vital additions to learning and schoolwork research and can allow her to keep in touch with friends and relatives who live far afield. They can, of course, also help you as parents to check in as your daughter becomes increasingly independent.


Statista figures show that 85% of 16-24 years olds have a smartphone in the US – likely your daughter’s had one for years before reaching 16. A 2019 report from Common Sense Media, a not-for-profit organization, promoting safe technology and media behavior among young people, found that teenagers spend an average of 7 hours a day looking at screens – that’s not including using their devices for educational purposes.

So, a phone’s a fundamental focus point of your daughter’s teenage existence. Learning how to locate her device can provide much-needed insight into her activities and whereabouts, from purely practical reasons to situations where you – as parents – feel there’s a real cause for concern.

Maybe the last time she was waiting for you to pick her up from a sports match in the pouring rain, you found yourself driving round and round the pitches thinking, “How can I find my daughter?!” A device tracking app would have saved those sodden trainers.

Or maybe she’s fallen in with the wrong crowd. Maybe her grades are slipping, and you don’t know why. Perhaps she’s out and about so much that you feel you’ve lost touch with what’s going on in her life, but you have a feeling you just can’t shake that it’s not good news.

Maybe approaching her directly – having an open, honest, and adult conversation about her habits, behavior, health, and well-being – just hasn’t worked. Maybe you’re left, thinking, “How can I track my daughter’s phone, simply to know she’s safe?”

How Do I Track My Daughter’s Location Without Her Knowing?

As the father of a girl myself, I can understand this concern. I’ve researched far and wide into how to monitor my daughter’s smartphone without her knowing, and want to share my insights with you here.

To make sure I was doing all I could to ensure her safety, it was also important to be able to follow my daughter’s phone location. Of course, our teens need their freedom: they need to learn, develop, spread their wings, and make their own mistakes.

Yet, as parents to girls, like me, you’ll understand the anxiety of waving them off on trips and to parties – and that’s a reality even when you have an open, honest relationship with them where you can talk about what they’re up to and with whom.

If your relationship with your daughter is more complex, there will be no such open communication. In these instances, if as a parent you’re concerned that your daughter’s getting herself into unsafe situations, it could be vital for you to get that central question answered: “How can I track my daughter’s iPhone without her knowing?”

I’ve researched far and wide to find the best daughter tracker app, eventually settling on the professional parental control app mSpy to track my daughter’s iPhone whenever required.

mSpy: My ‘Find My Daughter’s Phone’ App of Choice

find my daughter's phone mSpy

Throughout my quest to find a suitable app to track my teen’s phone, I was on the lookout for several key features: GPS tracking and geofencing. Now, mSpy has a whole range of positive features that I’ll dive into a little further on, but I’d like to hone in on these two first.

mSpy’s GPS tracking feature allows you to keep tabs on your daughter’s whereabouts straight from your mSpy app Control Panel. You can see their real-time location on a detailed map that will provide you with all the information you need, including a set of coordinates, an address, and an accuracy rating for the GPS location. You’ll also be able to check in on your daughter’s route history over a specific period of time to assuage any doubts you may have.

Now, the geofencing feature is the element of mSpy that I appreciate the most. Geofencing allows you to set personalized “safe zones,” which could include your daughter’s trusted friends’ houses, relatives’ houses, her school, local library, or sports center. You can receive notifications whenever she goes into and out of your established zones (you can plug in an uncapped amount of “safe” and “forbidden” zones as you need).

Via mSpy, you’ll be able to see a run-down of which zones your daughter’s been frequenting, when she was there and for how long she stayed. Plus, you can retrospectively track your daughter’s iPhone location by viewing the zone summary on an easily interpretable map.

How to Monitor My Daughter’s Phone Without Her Knowing?

The wonderful thing about mSpy is that I can track my daughter’s phone without her knowing. Simple to install on both her device and mine – with always-available technical support on hand – it’s the ideal method for me.

Now, GPS tracking and geofencing – while they’re my top-rated elements of the app – are just the beginning. mSpy is so much more than a mere geolocation tracking tool; its solutions extend far beyond location-based monitoring.

What Can You Monitor With mSpy?

Monitor all calls and block unwanted numbers from your daughter’s iPhone or Android device.

  • Monitor your daughter’s text messages.
  • View her messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, Skype, and iMessage.
  • View all multimedia files on your daughter’s device.
  • Access, the contacts, and calendar items, stored on your daughter’s phone.
  • Access her email account to monitor incoming and outgoing emails.
  • See a breakdown of the apps installed on her phone and block any you’d rather she didn’t access.
  • Monitor her Internet activity from her phone, blocking any websites you feel she shouldn’t be accessing.

How to Set up mSpy?

On iPhone

Choose whether you’re installing mSpy with or without Jailbreak.

Without Jailbreak (requires user’s iCloud credentials): follow the simple installation steps from the mSpy Control Panel on your device.

Ensure you have iPhone backup enabled on the device – if not, manually activate it via Settings > iCloud > iCloud Backup > On. Then hit Backup Now to sync mSpy with the device data.

With Jailbreak: check the device in question is compatible with Jailbreaking. You can check if it’ll work for your daughter’s device by clicking through Settings > General > About > Version and reading up on the Jailbreak options for her iPhone version.

Once you’ve successfully completed the Jailbreak process, simply access your mSpy Control Panel and select “iPhone” to complete the installation.

On Android phone

Once you have purchased the mSpy’s subscription you prefer, it’s time to begin installation. Just click on the downloaded bt.apk file to start the process. You will be given the list of requirements you simply need to skip by pressing the “Next” option. The warning may appear saying  “Do not install the app.” You have to click on the “Install Anyway” button. 

Once the installation is complete, click “Open.” Once you open the app, press “Continue” and “Accept.” Finally, activate the Update Service in order to have control of the device, and choose whether you want to make an mSpy icon visible or not.

How to Locate My Daughter’s iPhone for Free

track iPhone

Device manufacturers are somewhat on the ball by offering totally free of charge tracking options. For iPhones, you can make this happen via iCloud, but you’ll need access to your daughter’s device and Apple credentials.

Device manufacturers are somewhat on the ball by offering totally free of charge tracking options. For iPhones, you can make this happen via iCloud, but you’ll need access to your daughter’s device and Apple credentials.

  1. Make sure the “Find My iPhone” option is enabled on her iPhone (remember, she’ll be able to disable this easily if she chooses to).
  2. Log into your iCloud account from any device.
  3. Tap on “Find iPhone” from the main menu options.
  4. Type in your daughter’s Apple credentials and complete the sign-in process as prompted.
  5. Enter “Find My iPhone” from the app dashboard.
  6. Tap on the “All Devices” drop-down menu.
  7. Choose the name of her device to begin tracking.

Reasons to Track Your Daughter

As I outlined before, the reasons to monitor her activity range from the purely practical to the more emotional. Your daughter may well be happy for you to install a tracking app on her phone, to pick her up whenever she needs it easily.

Or, you might need to act under the radar to ensure you’re fulfilling your parental duty of keeping your daughter safe. Whatever the situation she’s in, sometimes – as a parent – you just have to step up.

Conclusion: How to Track My Daughter’s Phone: Your Questions, Answered

Based on personal experience, I know some of the anxieties you’re likely experiencing.

From one parent to another, I hope that the insight I’ve outlined here will give you some actionable tracking advice that you can deploy to keep your daughter safe.

My name is Ray Newland, and I am a cybersecurity expert with a passion for ethical hacking. Over my 20+ year career, I’ve tested several messaging apps for security flaws to make the online world safer. In this blog, I share my knowledge and techniques to help you do the same for your loved ones.
  • My daughter is very important to me and I want to do everything I can to protect her. I was looking for a way to track her phone so that I could see her location and know that she was safe. I found this article and it was very helpful. It showed me how to set up tracking on her phone so that I could see her location at all times. Thank you for this information!

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