There are cell phone apps for everything these days, including as it turns out, spying. Yes, that’s right, spying—like 007 himself. And they’re not as hard to use as you may think.
Google recently banned an application from the Android marketplace thatforwards SMS text messages. The idea is simple: a message is sent to one phone, and without the user knowing it, it automatically forwards it to a second phone. It’s as easy to setup and install as Angry Birds, or any other cell phone app out there.
Other spying applications can track cell phones via GPS. The Android game Tap Snake acts as a shell for the app GPS Spy. Tap Snake sends GPS data every 15 minutes to a second phone with GPS Spy enabled. Though considered malware, the program is still widely available online.
There are some commercial packages that can seemingly do it all—record email messages and SMS sent from the phone and monitor the phone location via GPS. They run in the background, hidden from the user, and are marketed primarily toward parents wanting to keep track of their kids and employers suspicious of their employees.
The more sophisticated our phones get the more programming possibilities—good, bad and ugly. With all that’s happening, is it surprising that we’re seeing a rise in anti-malware and virus protection for smart phones? Probably not. It’s something to consider along with more generic security procedures such as password locks and application prompts for GPS and Internet access.
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Ondrej Krehel As chief information security officer at Identity Theft 911—the nation’s premier identity theft and data breach management, resolution and education service—Krehel manages a comprehensive information security program and leads computer forensic investigations. He helps businesses and individuals secure their information.
