Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2015, and its data, including the 500-1,500 euro cost of specialist services, spy apps under 50 euros, a 5.86 euro detector app and the named spy apps, is from 2015. Several of these products may no longer exist.
Most people think that everything they do on their phone is personal and private. They think their calls stay secret and that their WhatsApp chats and emails are private. And that’s how it should be, but nowadays anyone can gain access to your voice calls, messages, Facebook and WhatsApp conversations, and even your exact location.
What’s more, they can even get at your photos the moment you take them, even if you delete them afterwards. The microphone can even be switched on so that someone can listen in on your everyday conversations (the ones you have with your family over a meal, with the phone lying on the table).
And we’re not saying this is something only the NSA or the secret services can do. Your partner, a friend or someone else can do it relatively easily.
How can a smartphone be spied on, how can we tell whether we’re being spied on, and how can we avoid falling victim to spyware? We look at all this below, because once spyware has been installed on a phone, it can no longer be detected, since its installation leaves no trace.
Until fairly recently, you had to go to a company that specialised in this kind of software. For somewhere between 500 and 1,500 euros, they would explain how to install it, so that once it was installed you would know where that person was at all times and could access all their calls from any other computer, along with their photos, their written conversations on any messaging service, the websites they visit, and so on.
The problem now is that, with the boom in mobile apps, some developers have released spy apps that sell for less than €50, a bargain considering what they are meant to do.
You should know that no antivirus on the market can protect you from these programs, because they come with certain permissions that stop an antivirus from treating them as intruders.
Is it legal to install spyware on a phone?
There is only one way that installing this kind of program can be legal, and that is when the person being monitored is told about it. Which, obviously, a jealous partner would never do.
Many companies, on the other hand, do warn their employees that all activity on their company phone will be recorded. In that case, if you agree once you’ve been told, it is entirely legal.
In any other case, accessing someone’s phone without their consent is severely punished by law.
How do these spy programs get installed?
There’s good news and bad news here. The good news is that a jealous boyfriend or girlfriend needs physical access to your phone for about five minutes (the time it takes to install the app on your device). As we said, once it’s installed, if you don’t suspect anything, it is undetectable.
The bad news is that every day we download apps to which we hand over access to all our content by default. In other words, our conversations and photos are probably already in the hands of people or companies we don’t know, although, in a way, they don’t care what we get up to in our love lives. But you should know that your smartphone is already practically tapped by dozens of companies.
How can you tell if someone is spying on you?
For now, the most capable app available for detecting at least the low-cost spy apps would be SPY Detector App, which detects and removes the well-known SpyBubble and other spy apps such as StealthGenie, Mobile Spy, FlexiSPY and MobiStealth, among others.
If you have doubts or fear that you’re being spied on, this app is one of the best on the market right now, at a price of around €5.86.
You can also reset your smartphone, with everything that involves, though you’ll still be left wondering whether your phone had been tapped.
Note: If spyware that had to be installed by hand has been on your phone, in most cases the police can track down whoever was spying on you, unless that person is a professional or has been very well advised on how to wipe out every trace.
How can you avoid being spied on?
All we can offer is common-sense advice. If you have a sweet and don’t want anyone to eat it, the most effective way to stop that from happening is to make sure nobody can get at the sweet.
So you should avoid letting your phone fall into anyone’s hands, including your partner’s.
Given that spy apps have to be installed manually (in most cases), simply having a password to get past the phone’s lock screen will stop that person from completing their “mission”.
But you should know that if the person who wants to tap your smartphone knows what they’re doing (has advanced knowledge), no password or obstacle will stop them once they have the phone in their hands.
Avoid free Wi-Fi networks
This is probably the most underrated piece of advice, because almost everyone connects to open Wi-Fi networks, which are the very opposite of a secure network. Anyone with fairly advanced knowledge of the subject could be intercepting connections on that network and getting hold of your passwords and your content. The networks we mean are the ones run by town halls, cafés, airports and so on.
And in case you’re wondering who tends to use these apps…
We’d like to say that these spy apps are mostly used by companies, but the truth is that the most typical and frequent users of these services are couples: boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives who want to know at every moment that their partner isn’t cheating on them, or who want total control over their partner.
Some parents who don’t trust their children very much also install them, giving their kids a smartphone with the spy app already installed.
And as Bugs Bunny used to say, “That’s all, folks!”
Featured image: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
