App providers routinely snoop on our phoning habits. Now, the same tech lets us spy on each other
All of us have downloaded so-called free apps on our phones. We pay a price, though not in cold cash, but by compromising our privacy. Before you can use the app, you have to agree for the provider to read your preferences, your phone settings, your browsing habits and your address book. This is spyware — legalised. There are no laws to protect your privacy in Cyberia.
Many of these snoop tools have now taken on a life of their own — as free software that allows you to pry into the browsing, mailing and texting habits of other phone owners. All you need to do is access the target handset and quickly install the spy in a hidden folder. A random search for spy software on Android’s Google Play or Apple’s Appstore and you will have dozens of apps popping up.
With all these apps you can track the target’s physical location, monitor and download their phone calling history; read the first 30-50 characters of every SMS or email they send or receive.
Installing the app on your partner’s phone is not very difficult. But if you need to snoop on a third party in a pati, patni aur woh situation, you can always find private agencies which include such ‘affirmative action’ in their detective work.
One legitimate avatar of such phone tracking is child monitoring. Parents gift phones even to children below 10 years old, to give them a safety umbilical. But this could be a double-edged sword. Kids are curious and tend to misuse phones, acquire dubious friends or exchange objectionable material. There are a few children’s phones that come preinstalled with tools to track what your children are viewing; block adult sites, keep tabs on their friends and also lay out a Geofence — a GPS-driven boundary beyond which they can’t stray without triggering an alert message to you.
An Indian app, Northstar, helps parents track their children even when they are in the school bus.
Another desi transport tracking solution is EvoSchool from Delhi-based Evoxyz shows you your kids’ location when they are in school and en route. Very young children can be fitted with a small waterproof Evotag that can be tracked by the parent.
Phone snooping technology doesn’t take a moral stand. It works equally well for anxious parents and paranoid spouses. You can try and reduce the risk by ensuring that people don’t get their hands on your device. Soon, they may be able to do it remotely. But are you going to throw away your phone I think not!
