Odd client and idk what to do anymore.

Odd client and idk what to do anymore.

Context: So I have a client who is convinced her iPhone has been hacked, her Smart TV, and everything in between she could think of. I factory reset her Android TV, and all was well there, didn't even sign into a Google account. But she has found some of the internal developer logs on her iPhone, and is cherry picking stuff out of it that is familiar and making connection to things that are coincidences at best. For example, she found one of the internal analytics logs for apps, and one of the things she got stuck on was Adam_ID, and upon a quick search, found out that it's Apples AppDtores unique identifier for applications that are on the Apple App store. However she is convinced that Adam_ID is the person who hacked her, because she has a neighbor who's brothers name is Adam, and I guess she's sketched out by her neighbor or something, idk. She is also asking about why her phone does stuff or accesses things in the background when she isn't explicitly using it, why it's generating logs when it's not being used, and was sketched out that her front facing camera has a red blinky light, which I explained to her was the facial mapping hardware used for Face ID. She also is seeing her neighbors WiFi show up under WiFi and she thinks she's being hacked from that as well, even though it's just SSID doing SSID things, and it's normal operation to see WiFi network around you. She insists that she wants those gone, and doesn't understand why her neighbors WiFi networks are showing up on HER phone. She's been spamming the shit out of me with useless screenshots of analytic logs, and has started attempting to uninstall and delete core stuff from her iPhone thinking she's doing something productive. She also also was connecting to her Wiz Color lightbulb and didn't understand what it was until I had her start unscrewing lightbulbs in her house until she found the Wiz Color one, which she was like ohh I thought I unplugged that, and was convinced prior that the WizConfig network she has connected to was hacking her. Needless to say, after her unscrewing that Wiz Color bulb, the network disappeared. She is convinced that someone is listening to her on her phone, using her camera, and stuff like that. I have looked extensively at these devices before and after factory resets, pulled logs, and did the needful to sus out any thing that could be legitimate, and as far as I can tell, nothing is out of the ordinary both before and after the factory resets. Everything I have looked at so far looks legitimate and have not been able to find any trace of malicious activity on the devices.

I have also had her roll all her credentials, call her carrier to ensure that her devices haven't been cloned/SIM Swapped, and setup MFA. I have also setup a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro, an AP, which has been offline on my console for more than a month now, as she has unplugged her cable modem.
I secured the crap out of her Wireless network and have been monitoring for malicious activity prior to her abruptly unplugging it from the Internet.

She has been staying up for extended periods she informed me looking for things. Everything she sent in screenshots she was convinced is a smoking gun if you will, is all in fact very regular and normal logs and information, mostly analytics logs.

She obviously doesn't know how to interpret them, and is chasing ghosts here, and trying to make sense of things. However she doesn't have the qualifications or knowledge necessary to be able to understand exactly what she's looking at or be able to understand what it's used for.

She is an absolute emotional and psychological mess. I am starting to think maybe she has some psychological issues going on, as I have had a few roommates in the past who were schizophrenic, and behaved in a eerily similar fashion when they fell off their meds. I'm not a doctor or anything but have seen what it looks like first hand, and can't help but to notice some parallels and similarities. Telling someone who is crazy that they're crazy isn't conducive and doesn't work out well usually, and telling them they're uninformed or don't know what they're talking about is not conducive to their ego either.

This has been ongoing for several months at this point, and I can't find anything to substantiate her claims as much as I have really wanted to, it's just not there.

How do I help or approach this in a positive way?

What the heck should I do?

Her husband has contracted me, but he has to live with her and is roughly on the same page as me when I explain it to him. She doesn't want to believe it. Do I bring on a psychologist or some form of mental health professional? How do I even begin to pitch that might be something they should look into without being an anus?

Do I just cut them loose and say I cannot help them anymore and just square up on the bill?

I really am not sure the best way to approach this at this point, I've done all my due diligence and haven't found anything remotely indicating compromise at this time. I've looked several times and her phone has been factory reset at least 3 different times. It's just not there.

Does anyone else here have any experience with this type of thing, and if so, what did you end up doing? Any help or insight would be super appreciated.

I forgot to add, she also had hand written out the SSL certificates and chains for Google and a number of other websites, including the hashed fingerprint into a paper notebook. Truly dedication here, but also madness. She didn't understand why a certificate from Google was showing up on HER phone after going to Google's website. In addition she has also found the open source license on a number of her devices which are supposed to be there since the device is using OSS and needs to be credited to maintain compliance with the license and use. She has also written all of these down by hand, and thinks that GitHub and Google Developers are the deep underground of cabals or whatever. I tried to explain this to her, and she is like no, this is who hacked me, these developers because their licenses and code are on my devices. Idk wtf to do anymore.

tl;dr client thinks she's been hacked, but no evidence supports it. Starting to think it might be a mental health issue.

UPDATE!

I had the conversation with her husband today. I let him know I've continued to find no evidence of compromise, and we're spinning our wheels at this point.

I also mentioned that I am unable to ethically continue to take any more time and money from him as I'm certain the issue is not a technical one, but a human one.

I paused for a moment and basically said I don't know how to really say this, and that I'm not a doctor or a qualified professional in this aspect by any means and he was like just say it. So I said I used to have a roommate who had schizophrenia pretty bad, and he got on meds and would take them for a few months and be totally good, but then he would think that because he was better, he didn't need to take the meds anymore and would go off of them for a while, and when he was off the meds, his behavior and outlook that I observed is drawing a lot of parallels and similarities that I am seeing here. I also said I think it might be a mental health issue or potentially schizophrenia and if I were him, I might look into exploring that aspect with a qualified professional. He also mentioned that I am not the first person to say this either.

He said to me that she has a history of bipolar, but he thinks she might've been misdiagnosed, and I said that she may still have bipolar too, but that multiple issues can still exist at the same time together, and it might be worth exploring further with the right kind of professional, which I am not.

He also mentioned that he took her to a psychologist prior to engaging with me, and he told the psychologist to not mention certain things initially as he knew she would blow up about it, and apparently the psychologist did the exact opposite of what he tried to preface the meeting with, and indeed blew it up, and she freaked out about it. I said he should probably find another psychologist because that was pretty fucked up of them to do, and didn't at all result in any positive effect or outcome with the one he brought her to initially.

He said he'd look into it, and work on getting her the help she needs. He also told me to block her number and I guess she grabs his phone at night too, so to email him stuff (at an email not on his phone) so she doesn't read the text messages and flip on him. I told him I would do so, and he encouraged me to send over the invoice that way and he would get it paid. He also said she wanted her notebooks back with the SSL cert among other scribblings she wrote down in its entirety from Google's website, so I will be meeting with him briefly next week to drop those off. I guess she wanted me to look at the phone again too, but he's going to try and figure out a way to tell her I'm not going to be working with her anymore.

Finally, before ending the call with him, I told him that I know that this kind of thing must be really hard on him and his family, and that if he ever wanted to just talk or have someone to just talk to, I'm happy to be a friend to him. He's an older dude and may not have anyone to talk to about his side of it. BECAUSE EMPATHY IS IMPORTANT!

tl;dr Clean, humane break, getting paid, and no indication of any further issues... Spoke with Husband, He agreed to pay for the services and to send him the bill. We both agreed that it's best to end services. She also wants her notebooks back. Also he is considering revisiting getting her some mental health treatment again, but needs to find a new provider to do so. Offered an olive branch to the husband.

To the Reddit fam: Thank all of y'all so much, everyone of you turned me on to different perspectives and ideas in how to approach and tackle this, as well as help validate what should be done, and what I suspected but wasn't entirely sure of yet. Y'all also helped give me the courage to tackle this thing head on in having this difficult yet delicate conversation and gave me great ideas and various feedback on how to handle this, and comfort in the many similar stories that all of you shared, so I felt less isolated in this very odd experience. I just want to simply say thank you all for all of your advice, ideas and comments. It really helped.