from Activist Post:
People love their smartphones, but did you know they could be spying on you? A recent study by computer scientists from New York University and UC San Diego uncovered the hidden dangers of spyware apps. These apps are not only difficult to detect, but they can also leak your sensitive information without your knowledge. The team warns that it’s important to be aware of this issue and take steps to protect yourself and your privacy.
“This is a real-life problem and we want to raise awareness for everyone, from victims to the research community,” says Enze Alex Liu, the first author of the paper, in a university release.
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Spyware apps are often marketed as tools to monitor children or employees, but they can also be used by abusers to secretly spy on their partners. These apps are designed to record everything that happens on a victim’s device, including text messages, emails, photos, and even phone calls. The abusers can then access this information remotely through a web portal. The use of spyware apps has been on the rise, with a significant increase in their usage in recent years.
To find out if your device has been infected with a spyware app, you can check your privacy dashboard and the list of all apps in your device’s settings. However, these apps are specifically designed to remain hidden, making them difficult to detect.
The study focused on analyzing 14 leading spyware apps for Android phones. While Google does not allow the sale of these apps on its official app store, they can still be downloaded separately from the web. This is in contrast to iPhones, which do not allow such “side-loading” of apps, making spyware apps less prevalent on this platform.
So, how do spyware apps work?
These apps run secretly on a device, collecting a wide range of sensitive information such as location data, text messages, calls, and even audio and video recordings. Some apps can even stream live audio and video. All this data is then sent to the abuser through an online spyware portal.
The researchers discovered that spyware apps use various techniques to collect data without the user’s knowledge. For example, some apps utilize invisible browsers to stream live video from the device’s camera to the spyware server. Other apps can record phone calls by activating the device’s microphone or even the speaker function. Additionally, some apps take advantage of accessibility features designed for visually impaired users to record keystrokes and other sensitive information.
To make matters worse, these apps can hide themselves on the victim’s device. They can avoid appearing in the app launcher or masquerade as harmless icons like “Wi-Fi” or “Internet Service.” Some apps even accept commands through SMS messages, with a few of them executing these commands regardless of their source. In extreme cases, a command could be sent to remotely wipe the victim’s phone.
