Category: Investigation Notes

If you believe someone is tracking you rather than merely watching your accounts, see is it legal to track your spouse in Florida, which covers the 2025 change making unauthorized tracking a third degree felony and what a found device is worth as evidence.

Cyberstalking in Florida is a course of conduct, not a single message. Section 784.048 of the Florida Statutes defines it as communicating words, images or language electronically, directed at or pertaining to a specific person, causing substantial emotional distress and serving no legitimate purpose. The phrase that matters is course of conduct: a pattern over time is what the law is built around.

Which means the single most useful thing you can do right now is document, not confront. This is general information, not legal advice.

What counts as cyberstalking in Florida?

Repeated unwanted messages after being told to stop. Messages sent from new accounts after you block the old ones. Posts about you rather than to you, where the intent is that you see them. Monitoring or publicising your location or movements. Threats, or content designed to frighten you into responding.

A single rude message is generally not cyberstalking. Twenty messages across six accounts over three weeks, after you asked them to stop, is a course of conduct and it looks entirely different on paper.

How do I know if someone is monitoring me?

The most common signs are informational rather than technical: private plans getting back to people who were not told them, someone referencing details they had no legitimate way to know, or a person consistently appearing where you did not announce you would be.

Technical signs are less reliable than people expect. A hot phone or a draining battery usually means an old battery. What is worth checking is account access rather than the device itself: unfamiliar logged-in sessions, recovery emails and phone numbers you do not recognize, forwarding rules you did not create, and shared location settings left on from a previous relationship. That last one accounts for a large share of cases where someone always seems to know where you are.

What should I do first?

Preserve, do not confront. Screenshot everything with the URL, the account name and the date visible. Leave message threads intact rather than deleting them. Keep a written log of when each thing happened. Do not warn the person you are documenting, because the first thing a subject does when warned is delete, and deleted content is much harder to establish later.

If you believe the other person has access to your accounts or devices, do this from a device they cannot reach.

Can an investigator find out who is behind an anonymous account?

Often, using open source attribution: username reuse across platforms, posting and writing patterns, images and any metadata that survived upload, timing, and the public connections between accounts. Sometimes that resolves to a name. Sometimes it resolves to a documented set of links that a subpoena can finish.

What no licensed investigator can do is access the account, obtain subscriber records from the platform, or read anyone’s private messages. Those require legal process. Anyone offering them is describing a crime.

How does documentation help legally?

A Florida petition for an injunction against stalking requires you to show the course of conduct, and courts see a great many phone screenshots with no context. A documented chronology with preserved captures, timestamps and attribution of accounts to a person is a different exhibit entirely.

Open source and social media investigation is $600. Extended attribution work across multiple platforms is scoped and quoted before any work begins.

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Written by Joshua Goldberg, Florida private investigator license C3400073, owner of Insight Investigative Group, LLC, agency license A3400127, Bradenton, Florida. General information, not legal advice.

Related: cyber investigations and TSCM bug sweeps.

In general, no. Section 934.425 of the Florida Statutes makes it unlawful to knowingly install a tracking device or tracking application on another person’s property without that person’s consent. The statute carries limited exceptions. Since October 1, 2024 a violation is a third degree felony, and since October 1, 2025 a second degree felony where the tracking is done to commit or facilitate a dangerous crime. It was previously a second degree misdemeanor, and a great deal of the advice still circulating online reflects that older, lighter penalty.

There is a second trap that almost nobody knows about. Section 934.425(3) presumes consent revoked once a spouse files a petition for dissolution of marriage, or where either party files for an injunction for protection. A tracker your spouse agreed to during the marriage becomes unauthorized by operation of law the moment the petition is filed, without anyone having to withdraw permission. We cover that, and what you can lawfully do instead, in is it legal to track your spouse in Florida.

This comes up constantly in divorces, custody disputes and business partnerships, usually phrased as “it’s our car, so it’s fine.” Often it is not fine. This is general information and not legal advice, and the answer can turn on facts specific to your situation.

What does section 934.425 actually say?

It prohibits knowingly installing a tracking device or application on another person’s property without that person’s consent, where the purpose is to determine that person’s location or movement. Consent has to be genuine, and consent given for one purpose does not carry over to another.

What are the exceptions?

The statute names several. A law enforcement officer or agency that lawfully installs a device as part of a criminal investigation. A parent or legal guardian tracking a minor child, but only where one of the statute’s conditions is met: the parents are married and not separated and either consents, the person is the sole surviving parent, the person has sole custody, or the parents are separated or divorced and both consent. There are also exceptions covering business use of company vehicles and certain caregiver situations.

Notice what is not on that list: a spouse tracking a spouse, a partner tracking a partner, or an employer tracking an employee’s personal vehicle.

What about a car we both own?

Joint titling does not automatically make it lawful, and this is where people get into trouble. The statute is written around tracking a person, not around who holds title to metal. If your spouse is the sole driver of a jointly titled car and you place a device to monitor their movements, you are tracking a person without consent regardless of whose name is on the registration.

Ask your attorney before anyone puts anything on a vehicle. This is a question with a real criminal answer attached to it, and the cost of asking first is nothing.

Can a private investigator place a tracker for me?

No. A licensed investigator is bound by the same statute and will not place a tracking device on a vehicle a client does not own and control. A firm that offers to do it is describing a crime and telling you how it will handle the rest of your case.

What a licensed investigator can do is conduct surveillance from public vantage points, which is lawful, produces documentation you can actually use, and does not expose you to a criminal charge or hand the other side a weapon in your family case.

I found a tracker on my car. What now?

Do not throw it away. A device on your vehicle placed without your consent is potential evidence of a crime, and its position, condition and serial numbers matter. Leave it where it is, photograph it in place if you can do so safely, and get advice before removing it.

A vehicle sweep documents the device where it sits and preserves it to evidentiary standards before anything is moved, so that you, your attorney or law enforcement can decide what to do next. A single vehicle sweep is $500 flat.

If you believe you are being tracked, do not research this from a device the other person can see, and do not discuss it inside a space they can access.

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Written by Joshua Goldberg, Florida private investigator license C3400073, owner of Insight Investigative Group, LLC, agency license A3400127, Bradenton, Florida. General information, not legal advice.

Related: TSCM bug sweeps and vehicle sweeps and domestic investigations.

A workers’ compensation investigation documents whether a claimant’s activity is consistent with their reported restrictions. It is not an attempt to prove fraud. In Florida it is carried out by a licensed private investigative agency under Chapter 493 of the Florida Statutes, and the resulting report is written to be read alongside the medical restrictions in the claim file.

Insight Investigative Group, LLC is a licensed Florida private investigative agency, agency license A3400127, and surveillance is $1,000 per day, flat. What follows is how this work is actually done.

What is a workers’ compensation investigation?

It is the documentation of a claimant’s observable activity, measured against what they have reported to the carrier and to their treating physician. The question is almost never whether someone left the house. It is whether what they did is consistent with what they said they could do.

A claimant with a twenty pound lifting restriction who is photographed carrying a bag of mulch has a documented inconsistency. A claimant who walks to their mailbox does not. The distinction is the entire job, and an investigator who cannot articulate it is producing footage rather than evidence.

When is surveillance worth the cost?

Surveillance earns its cost where there is a specific, documented inconsistency to test: a claimant reported working elsewhere, activity on social media that contradicts stated restrictions, a treating physician questioning the reported mechanism of injury, or a claim where the reported limitations and the observed lifestyle have already diverged.

It is usually wasted where the file has nothing but a general suspicion. Before an assignment is opened we will tell you honestly when we think a subject’s routine makes a day unlikely to produce anything. That conversation has closed files without an assignment, which is the point of having it.

What does an AOE COE investigation cover?

AOE COE stands for arising out of employment and course of employment. It establishes whether the injury happened at work and in the course of the claimant’s duties. It combines recorded statements from the claimant, witnesses and the employer, documentation of the scene, and a review of prior claim and litigation history.

It is frequently more decisive than surveillance and much less expensive, because a compensability problem ends a claim faster than an activity inconsistency does. On a file with a questionable mechanism of injury it is the first thing to run, not the last.

How long should surveillance run?

Most assignments are one to three days. A single day establishes whether the subject is reachable and what their pattern looks like. Additional days are worth booking when the first produced activity worth developing, and are worth declining when it did not.

Days are better chosen than accumulated. Three correctly selected hours routinely beat twenty spent guessing, which is why establishing the pattern first tends to cost the carrier less overall.

What can an investigator legally document in Florida?

Surveillance is conducted from public places and public vantage points where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. A licensed investigator may record video in those settings, follow a subject on public roads, and document what is visible from them.

An investigator may not trespass onto private property, may not record private conversations without the consent of all parties under section 934.03 of the Florida Statutes, and may not place a tracking device on a claimant’s vehicle under section 934.425. Investigations conducted otherwise hand claimant counsel the case, and that is a far more expensive outcome than an inconclusive surveillance day. This is general information, not legal advice.

What makes a surveillance report usable?

Timestamped video and stills logged as captured. A written chronological activity log covering the whole assignment, including the periods where nothing happened. Maintained chain of custody on all recorded media. And an investigator who observed it and can speak to what he saw.

A report that documents only the adverse observations is not an investigation, and claimant counsel will make that point before you do. Ours record what was observed, including observations that support the claimant, because a file that only ever produces the findings someone hoped for is being told a story.

What does it cost?

Surveillance is $1,000 per day, flat, including unlimited mileage and travel, video and stills, and a written case report. There is no multi-day discount. Claim investigations that do not involve surveillance are quoted per file.

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Written by Joshua Goldberg, Florida private investigator license C3400073, owner of Insight Investigative Group, LLC, agency license A3400127, Bradenton, Florida.

Related: insurance fraud and claims investigation and surveillance services.