Fifty years ago, Cold War spy tradecraft required ingenious, purpose-built spy technologies. These included tiny cameras that photographed through button-holes on microfilm, which were useful for taking pictures of paper documents, tiny microphones that had to be installed in landline telephone receivers or lamps for recording secret conversations, invisible ink — you name it.
Spying was hard. Spies back then couldn’t imagine how easy it would become in the year 2020 thanks to stalkerware and smartphones. They wouldn’t believe that every person would carry in their pocket or purse a connected device that tracks the owner’s location at all times, contains a microphone and camera and transmits nearly all of the owner’s communications. Best of all, the sensors can be remotely activated so all the data can be transmitted to a spy.
In fact, spying is so easy today that anybody can do it. Just download an app, install it on a target’s phone and harvest gigabytes of data. It’s so easy that people are spying on their spouses, ex-partners and even strangers.
Except this kind of spying isn’t called spying. It’s called stalking. And any stalker can just download spying software designed to snoop and track. Stalkerware apps can track one’s location, record audio through the phone’s microphone, copy and transmit text messages, send call logs, record web browsing activity, record keystrokes and more — and all of it can occur without the phone user’s knowledge.
Although this category of spying has been around for many years, news reports are on the rise for two reasons: First, the use of this invasive software is growing worldwide, and second, it’s part of a rising public conversation around d ..
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