In other scenarios, abusers who know their partner’s passcode can simply unlock the device to open the stalkerware and review the recorded data. Sometimes, the information gets sent to the abuser’s email address or it can be downloaded from a website.
But they all generally work the same way: An abuser with access to a victim’s device installs the app on the phone and disguises the software as an ordinary piece of software, like a calendar app.įrom there, the app lurks in the background, and later, the abuser retrieves the data. Some record phone calls, some log keystrokes, and others track location or upload a person’s photos to a remote server. Various stalkerware apps collect different types of information. Because mobile devices have access to more intimate data, including photos, real-time location, phone conversations and messages, the apps became known as stalkerware. Surveillance software has proliferated on computers for decades, but more recently spyware makers have shifted their focus to mobile devices. Here’s a guide to how stalkerware works, what to look out for and what to do about it. Even if you did, it can be difficult to detect since antivirus software only recently began flagging these apps as malicious. He added that the new stalkerware was not a vulnerability in the iPhone that could be fixed with technology if an abuser had access to a person’s device and passcode.įighting stalkerware is tough. Google said it banned apps that violated its policies, including the Flash Keylogger app after I contacted Google about it.Īn Apple spokesman referred me to a safety guide that it published last year in response to the threat of these apps. Yet new stalking software targeting iPhones has also emerged.
Such apps are more pervasive on phones running Android, researchers said, because the more open nature of Google’s software system gives the programs deeper access to device data and lets people install whatever apps they want on their phones.
But this technology becomes stalkerware when it’s stealthily installed on a partner’s phone to spy on him or her without consent. There are legitimate uses for surveillance apps, like parental control software that monitors children online to protect them from predators. Stalkerware is a thorny issue because it lives in a gray area. This month, the Federal Trade Commission said it had barred one app maker, Support King, from offering SpyFone, a piece of stalkerware that gains access to a victim’s location, photos and messages. And they have become such a tool for digital domestic abuse that Apple and Google have started in the last year acknowledging that the apps are an issue.įrom last September to May, the number of devices infected with stalkerware jumped 63 percent, according to a study by the security firm NortonLifeLock. They are widely available on Google’s Play Store and to a lesser degree on Apple’s App Store, often with innocuous names like MobileTool, Agent and Cerberus. In my tests, the app documented all of my typing, including web searches, text messages and emails.įlash Keylogger is part of a rapidly expanding group of apps known as “stalkerware.” While these apps numbered in the hundreds a few years ago, they have since grown into the thousands. Once it was installed from Google’s official app store, its icon could be changed to that of a calculator or calendar app. The app described itself as a tool to monitor the online activities of family members by logging what they type.
That’s what I concluded after downloading the free app Flash Keylogger onto an Android smartphone this week. But it was actually spyware recording my every keystroke - the type of data that would give a stalker unfettered access to my private life.