What if someone is following me?

​

The number one skill in Counter Surveillance, VIP Protection or any other type of Professional skill is situational awareness. You must learn to see what is going on around you. This is how we anticipate threats.

 

If you think someone is watching you and following you, there could be many reasons why they are doing this. Do they want to rob you or attack you physically? Are they stalking you, watching from a distance but never getting close? Whatever the reason, I advise that you stay in a public area where you are safe, keep them discreetly on view, and call the police. Even us pros call the police now and then.

 

The police can solve many problems for you and can be a great source of information, even while they are completely incapable of protecting us. First of all, if the person following you wishes to do you harm, by staying in a public place, like a café, the attacker may well leave you alone and go search out other, easier prey. If they have you specifically in mind, the police can deal with that nicely. They will question the fellow and generally harass him, allowing you to exit the area.

 

If you see the police questioning the person and he shows some type of identification and then the police leave him alone to continue watching you, this tells you something else. This means he is probably a Private Investigator who is watching you. A Private Investigator license is really just a license to loiter, as we call it. He doesn’t have any authority but the police will leave him alone if he is just “hanging around”.

 

Once you know you have a Private Investigator following you, you can at least feel physically safe. Now you have to wonder why he is there, who hired him and most important, how do you keep him from getting information about you that he doesn’t need to have.

 

I would say it is time to learn some spy tradecraft, brush up on your operational security and do some Counter Surveillance or perhaps, even a Cleaning Run.