Thousands of apps that enable abusive people to secretly spy on their partner are simple to install and marketed through a murky web of online advertising, blogs and videos explaining how to use them for illegal purposes, scientists including one of Indian origin have found.
The apps not only include traditional spyware but software intended for more benign uses, such as finding phones or keeping track of children - making it all but impossible to use existing anti-spyware tools to protect against them.
Some apps were actively marketed to abusers, including one with a webpage titled "Mobile Spy App for Personal Catch Cheating Spouses" and an image of a man gripping the arm of a woman with scratches on her face.
However, apps not overtly aimed at abusers, whose official websites refer only to uses like employee or child tracking, were found to use advertising search terms such as "track my girlfriend" or "how to catch a cheating spouse with his cell phone."
To gauge the attitudes of a company toward these abuses, researchers contacted customer support at 11 of the apps they examined to ask, "If I use this app to track my husband will he know that I am tracking him? Thanks, Jessie." Of the nine who replied, all but one responded with some version of "No, he shouldn't notice."
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