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Police in China uncover ‘stalkerware’ app that lets users spy on partners
Phone spyware can reveal a victim’s location and chat conversations
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
When police in Nanjing, a city in eastern China, went through the phone of a fraud suspect in July, they noticed something unusual: It kept getting notifications of the real-time location of a particular phone number.
Investigators tracked down the owner of the number, who was completely unaware he was being spied on. The man turned out to be just one of more than 60,000 people nationwide who had fallen victim to a piece of so-called stalkerware, according to a CCTV report.
Stalkerware is a type of spyware that’s deliberately installed on a target’s device to monitor their activities. It steals personal data such as messages, phone records and GPS location -- and relays them to the stalker. Around the world, people have used it to spy on partners and coworkers.
In this case in China, the victim’s wife believed her husband was cheating on her, so she purchased the spy app for 999 yuan (US$142) and secretly put it on his phone. Like most stalkerware, the program was “hidden” from the phone owner: No app icon was shown. Without him knowing, the wife also gained access to his WeChat conversations, call record and SMS content.
WeChat, the app that does everything
Police used her purchase record to find the app’s creator, who’s accused of selling spyware through some 40 agents around the country.
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