Article on testing mobile spying application, shows seller's disturbing ad

Christopher Allan Webber at 2017-02-22T17:55:12Z

Here's an interesting and disturbing article on a spying application available for general purchase to be installed on phones. Most disturbing of all maybe is that it targets jealous lovers suspecting their partner of cheating on them, and shows an advertisement of a man aggressively holding the arm of a battered woman in its ad photo.

Mike Linksvayer shared this.

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WT*??

"Great" picture for a spy system... ¬¬

Can't wait to buy this... thing...

F****** disgusting!

JanKusanagi at 2017-02-22T21:49:29Z

Abusive parent, spouse (and many other relations, don't forget employer) with control over one's computing is a big threat, and an additional weakness of self-hosting. But hardly a strength for anything else. This malware is for installation on an individual device, right? It doesn't matter in this instance whether network applications one is primarily using are P2P, self-hosted, or centralized. There's malware installed on your device, by someone with some trusted and/or coercive relationship with you. The relationship and whatever social systems enabling the relationship are the main problems, and which can't be solved by computing. Computing might be able to do something to make it harder to install and maintain malware, but again the architecture of network applications seem a wash for that. It's very easy to accept locked down devices as a mitigation; coming up with better is one of the most significant challenges for software freedom. Heck, maybe the most. As I've commented various times over the last years, though usually in context of people thinking locked devices a good way to mitigate outright device theft.

Mike Linksvayer at 2017-02-23T01:31:48Z

Tyng-Ruey Chuang, Charles Stanhope, Diane Trout, Christopher Allan Webber and 2 others likes this.

I cannot help compare the way things are done today with that in the old days. That is, voicemail etc. was left on an answering machine at home or handled by telecom operators waiting for you (or, break-ins of course). One didn't get to leak GBs of intimate images and messages in seconds. I view the homogeneous infosphere (devices, "cloud", or not) we are embedded in today creates an environment to tempt people to think the unthinkable. No boy friend anytime in the history have more bits to be jealous about than those of today.

Tyng-Ruey Chuang at 2017-02-23T13:01:04Z

Christopher Allan Webber likes this.

Horrible ad, though not surprising some might use it that way.

Sarah Elkins at 2017-02-25T20:25:24Z