It has been confirmed that the Federal Trade Commission has banned SpyFone and CEO Scott Zuckerman from the surveillance business. It is due to the allegations that the stalker ware company planted and shared the data of the movements, online activities, phone use of the general public via a hidden device hack. The company’s application sold real-time information and access to secret surveillance, which allowed the stalkers and domestic abusers the chance to track the potential targets of their violence.
It is the second case that the FTC has talked about the stalkerwere applications, and the first case was where the FTC is getting a ban. FTC has alleged that Support King, LLC, these companies have worked with the Spyfone company and the stalkerware application that let the hackers, abusers, or stalkers look at:
- photos,
- GPS locations,
- text messages,
And other personal information of the people with this application installed on their phone without knowing that their personal information was leaked.
Installation and Features
To install the application on the phone, SpyFone needed the buyers who use Android devices, and the application asked for various permissions to bypass the phone’s restrictions. They also provided instructions on hiding the application so that the users would not know that their device was being monitored. To use some functions such as looking at the emails, the users’ phones must be “rooted” on this application.
Also, know that rooting or jailbreaking your phone could expose you to more security risks, negatively impacting the phone warranty. This illegal activity has helped the stalkers to steal the essential information of their targets and use them for their advantage. Always read the permissions that an application is asking for to protect yourself from this type of attack and protect your privacy from these attackers and hackers that could steal all the sensitive information.
