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Spyware Apps
Researchers from New York and San Diego have discovered that smartphone spyware apps used for tracking people can be hard to find and may accidentally leak sensitive information.
Spyware apps are often wrongly used by abusers to secretly track their spouse or partner. It doesn’t take much knowledge to setup and use these applications, and all a perpetrator must do is get temporary access to the person’s device. Once installed, the app will keep an eye on everything happening on the target’s device such as text messages, emails, images, and even phone calls. Abusers can then view this data by using an online dashboard.
Spyware has become a very serious problem. A study from Norton Labs showed that the number of devices with spyware apps in the United States increased by 63% between September 2020 and May 2021. According to another report from Avast in the UK, the use of spyware apps rose dramatically by 93% during this same time period.
If you think your device might have a virus, check your Privacy Settings and the list of apps in the Settings. That’s what the research team said.
Enze Alex Liu, a computer science Ph.D. student from the University of California San Diego, wants to research something called a “real-life problem”. He and his team want people – both victims and researchers – to understand more about this issue. To do so, they are presenting their findings at Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium in June 2023 in Zurich, Switzerland.
Scientists checked 14 of the most common spy apps for Android phones. Google will not allow these kinds of apps to be sold in the Google Play Store; however, you still can download them from other websites. iPhones do not let people download these kind of apps so the features and functions of such spy apps are usually less powerful than on Android phones.
Secretly Spy on Your Loved Ones for as Little as $100!
Sometimes a piece of software, called Spyware, can be secretly installed on phones or other devices without the owner even knowing. It collects very sensitive information from the device and sends it to an abuser through an online portal. This includes things like phone texts and calls, as well as audio and video recordings – some programs can even stream live audio and video!
Spyware apps can be bought for quite cheap prices and are very simple to install on a smartphone. You only need to spend around a maximum of $100 each month and you don’t have to know much tech stuff. However, people must temporarily gain access to the phone they are trying to spy on and add any app that is not offered in an approved app store.
Protect Your Device From Spy Apps Collecting Your Data Unbeknownst!
Researchers have found that some spying apps can secretly collect data from devices. For example, one app records videos from the device’s camera without anyone knowing and sending it to a server. It also listens to your phone calls when you’re talking and even turns on the speaker in case it isn’t able to pick up what you said.
Apps on smartphones can take advantage of accessibilty tools which are designed to help those with vision impairments. Android phones allow these apps to secretly record what you type and they know how to hide themselves on your device. For example, these apps can get rid of the app icon or even make it look like an ordinary “Wi-Fi” or “Internet Service” symbol so that no one knows about them.
Four apps allow someone to control your device through text messages. Two of these apps fail to check if the message was sent by their owner, meaning anyone can send commands. One app is even able to delete all your data on your phone without you knowing!
Unsafe Data Storage
Researchers looked into how secure user data was when collected by spyware apps. The answer? Not very safe! Only four out of fourteen of the apps studied used encrypted communication methods like photos, texts, and location data – including login credentials! All this information could easily be taken by someone else if you’re using a WiFi connection.
Researchers found that a lot of applications store our data in public places where anyone with the link can find and access it. Even worse, some websites have predictable URLs, meaning that someone could switch out certain characters and find info from lots of different accounts. One spying tool even had an authentication weakness, so anybody would be able to get all the data from all the accounts.
Lots of these apps have access to sensitive information and keep this data even after you stop using them. Out of the 14 apps researched, four wouldn’t delete the data from their servers – no matter if you deleted your account or when license expired. Even worse, one app captures information from you during a free trial period, but only makes it available to someone else after they pay for a subscription – and that means that if they don’t pay for it, the app still holds on to all your info!
Android Says No More
Scientists want Android to make sure that all apps on phones should have icons visible in the launch bar. This means that there would be much stricter limits on which apps can hide their icons.
Researchers discovered that many spyware apps were difficult to delete. Some of them even kept trying to restart themselves after the Android system or device rebooted. The researchers suggested making some kind of ‘dashboard’ to monitor these kinds of apps and see if they are automatically starting again.
Android devices use different techniques, like showing a warning sign that can’t be ignored while an app has control over the microphone or camera. But this system can occasionally crash because even harmless activities on the device may trigger these warnings.
The researchers suggest that all activities related to viewing private information should be seen in the Privacy Dashboard, and users should get reminders about apps with too many permissions.
Investigating Surveillance Apps
The researchers told all the companies with apps that had been affected by their findings. However, no one answered them back before the paper was released.
In order to prevent people from misusing or abusing their code, they said they would only give it out to users who need it for something important.
At New York University, Dr. Damon McCoy and his team are going to continue doing further research on spyware apps. It seems that many of these apps were developed in China and Brazil, so they have to figure out how these apps can be installed outside those countries.
The researchers are suggesting that we need to come up with new, creative ideas in order to tackle the problem of surveillance. To do this, companies such as Visa and Paypal should provide payment interventions and governments should take regular crackdowns against the issue. Additionally, law enforcement may also have to take action in order to stop surveillance from becoming a common thing.
This study was funded by the National Science Foundation and supervised by the UC San Diego Center for Networked Systems. It’s called “No Privacy Among Spies: Assessing the Functionality and Insecurity of Consumer Android Spyware Apps” and it will be published in 2023 at the Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium.
