A ‘stalkerware’ app leaked phone data from thousands of victims
– By Zack Whittaker (Techcrunch) / Feb 20 2020
A spyware app designed to “monitor everything” on a victim’s phone has been secretly installed on thousands of phones.
The app, KidsGuard, claims it can “access all the information” on a target device, including its real-time location, text messages, browser history, access to its photos, videos and app activities, and recordings of phone calls.
But a misconfigured server meant the app was also spilling out the secretly uploaded contents of victims’ devices to the internet.
These consumer-grade spyware apps — also known as “stalkerware” — have come under increased scrutiny in recent years for allowing and normalizing surveillance, often secretly and without obtaining permission from their victims. Although many of these apps are marketed toward parents to monitor their child’s activities, many have repurposed the apps to spy on their spouses. That’s prompted privacy groups and security firms to work together to help better identify stalkerware.
Continue to article: https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/20/kidsguard-spyware-app-phones/
