In a blind spreading factor detecting receiver, the amplitude of a desired signal term is decoupled from the spreading factor hypothesis for that signal. Furthermore, the amplitude of the desired signal and the variance of an associated impairment term are estimated, and the estimates used to form a spreading factor hypothesis. Additionally, in one or more embodiments, a suboptimal detector does not rely on estimates of the amplitude of the desired signal or variance of the impairment term. Rather, the detector relies on scaled values that are partially despread using an initial spreading factor not greater than the smallest possible spreading factor used by the signal of interest, and combined using combining weights from a Rake or G-Rake processor, wherein the scaling factor is chosen to yield a unity ratio between the signal amplitude and noise variance after scaling.