Thousands of apps let abusive people easily spy on partners

Washington DC: 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."

"Thousands of these apps are available in the open market," said Rahul Chatterjee, a doctoral student at Cornell University in the US.

"You can easily find them, and existing anti-spyware apps don't detect them, so intimate partner violence victims have no way to know they're being spied on," said Chatterjee.

The researchers reported their findings to Google, which in response stopped allowing advertisements for abuse-related searches and tightened policies in its Play Store.

Victims of domestic abuse increasingly report online surveillance, which allows abusers to monitor their locations, conversations and more - sometimes leading to violent or even fatal confrontations.