There’s a complete shady trade for individuals who wish to monitor and spy on their households. A number of app makers market their software program — generally known as stalkerware — to jealous companions who can use these apps to entry their victims’ telephones remotely.
But, regardless of how delicate this knowledge is, an rising variety of these firms are shedding large quantities of it.
In keeping with TechCrunch’s tally, counting the most recent knowledge exposures of Cocospy and Spyic, there have been at the least 23 stalkerware firms since 2017 which can be identified to have been hacked or that leaked prospects’ and victims’ knowledge on-line. That’s not a typo: A minimum of 23 stalkerware firms have both been hacked or had a big knowledge publicity in recent times. And 4 stalkerware firms have been hacked a number of occasions.
Cocospy and Spyic are the primary stalkerware firms in 2025 to have inadvertently uncovered delicate knowledge. The 2 surveillance operations left messages, pictures, name logs, and different private and delicate knowledge of tens of millions of victims uncovered on-line, in response to a safety researcher who discovered a bug that allowed them to entry that knowledge.
Within the case of Cocospy, the corporate leaked 1.81 million buyer e mail addresses, and Spyic leaked 880,167 buyer e mail addresses. That’s a complete of two.65 million e mail addresses, after eradicating duplicate addresses that appeared in each breaches, in response to an evaluation by Troy Hunt, who runs knowledge breach notification website Have I Been Pwned.
In 2024, there have been at the least 4 huge stalkerware hacks. The final stalkerware breach in 2024 affected Spytech, a little-known adware maker based mostly in Minnesota, which uncovered exercise logs from the telephones, tablets, and computer systems monitored with its adware. Earlier than that, there was a breach at mSpy, one of many longest-running stalkerware apps, which uncovered tens of millions of buyer assist tickets that included the non-public knowledge of tens of millions of its prospects.
Beforehand, an unknown hacker broke into the servers of the U.S.-based stalkerware maker pcTattletale. The hacker then stole and leaked the corporate’s inside knowledge. In addition they defaced pcTattletale’s official web site with the objective of embarrassing the corporate. The hacker referred to a latest TechCrunch article the place we reported pcTattletale was used to watch a number of entrance desk check-in computer systems at a U.S. resort chain.
On account of this hack, leak and disgrace operation, pcTattletale founder Bryan Fleming mentioned he was shutting down his firm.
Client adware apps like mSpy and pcTattletale are generally known as “stalkerware” (or spouseware) as a result of jealous spouses and companions use them to surreptitiously monitor and surveil their family members. These firms typically explicitly market their merchandise as options to catch dishonest companions by encouraging unlawful and unethical conduct. And there have been a number of court docket instances, journalistic investigations, and surveys of home abuse shelters that present that on-line stalking and monitoring can result in instances of real-world hurt and violence.
And that’s why hackers have repeatedly focused a few of these firms.
Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity on the Digital Frontier Basis and a number one researcher and activist who has investigated and fought stalkerware for years, mentioned the stalkerware trade is a “delicate goal.”
“The individuals who run these firms are maybe not essentially the most scrupulous or actually involved in regards to the high quality of their product,” Galperin advised TechCrunch.
Given the historical past of stalkerware compromises, that could be an understatement. And due to the shortage of care for shielding their very own prospects — and consequently the non-public knowledge of tens of 1000’s of unwitting victims — utilizing these apps is doubly irresponsible. The stalkerware prospects could also be breaking the legislation, abusing their companions by illegally spying on them, and, on prime of that, placing everybody’s knowledge at risk.
A historical past of stalkerware hacks
The flurry of stalkerware breaches started in 2017 when a gaggle of hackers breached the U.S.-based Retina-X and the Thailand-based FlexiSpy again to again. These two hacks revealed that the businesses had a complete variety of 130,000 prospects everywhere in the world.
On the time, the hackers who — proudly — claimed duty for the compromises explicitly mentioned their motivations have been to show and hopefully assist destroy an trade that they think about poisonous and unethical.
“I’m going to burn them to the bottom, and go away completely nowhere for any of them to cover,” one of many hackers concerned then advised Motherboard.
Referring to FlexiSpy, the hacker added: “I hope they’ll collapse and fail as an organization, and have a while to mirror on what they did. Nonetheless, I worry they may attempt to give start to themselves once more in a brand new type. But when they do, I’ll be there.”
Regardless of the hack, and years of adverse public consideration, FlexiSpy remains to be energetic immediately. The identical can’t be mentioned about Retina-X.
The hacker who broke into Retina-X wiped its servers with the objective of hampering its operations. The corporate bounced again — after which it obtained hacked once more a yr later. A few weeks after the second breach, Retina-X introduced that it was shutting down.
Simply days after the second Retina-X breach, hackers hit Mobistealth and Spymaster Professional, stealing gigabytes of buyer and enterprise information, in addition to victims’ intercepted messages and exact GPS places. One other stalkerware vendor, the India-based SpyHuman, encountered the identical destiny just a few months later, with hackers stealing textual content messages and name metadata, which contained logs of who known as who and when.
Weeks later, there was the primary case of unintended knowledge publicity, somewhat than a hack. Spy Fone left an Amazon-hosted S3 storage bucket unprotected on-line, which meant anybody may see and obtain textual content messages, pictures, audio recordings, contacts, location, scrambled passwords and login info, Fb messages, and extra. All that knowledge was stolen from victims, most of whom didn’t know they have been being spied on, not to mention know their most delicate private knowledge was additionally on the web for all to see.
Different stalkerware firms that through the years have irresponsibly left prospects’ and victims’ knowledge on-line are Household Orbit, which left 281 gigabytes of private knowledge on-line protected solely by an easy-to-find password; mSpy, which leaked over 2 million buyer information in 2018; Xnore, which let any of its prospects see the non-public knowledge of different prospects’ targets, which included chat messages, GPS coordinates, emails, pictures, and extra; MobiiSpy, which left 25,000 audio recordings and 95,000 photos on a server accessible to anybody; KidsGuard, which had a misconfigured server that leaked victims’ content material; pcTattletale, which previous to its hack additionally uncovered screenshots of victims’ gadgets uploaded in actual time to an internet site that anybody may entry; and Xnspy, whose builders left credentials and personal keys within the apps’ code, permitting anybody to entry victims’ knowledge; and now Cocospy and Spyic, which left victims’ messages, pictures, name logs, and different private knowledge, in addition to prospects’ e mail addresses, uncovered on-line.
So far as different stalkerware firms that truly obtained hacked, there was Copy9, which noticed a hacker steal the info of all its surveillance targets, together with textual content messages and WhatsApp messages, name recordings, pictures, contacts, and browser historical past; LetMeSpy, which shut down after hackers breached and wiped its servers; the Brazil-based WebDetetive, which additionally obtained its servers wiped, after which hacked once more; OwnSpy, which supplies a lot of the back-end software program for WebDetetive, additionally obtained hacked; Spyhide, which had a vulnerability in its code that allowed a hacker to entry the back-end databases and years of stolen knowledge from round 60,000 victims; Oospy, which was a rebrand of Spyhide, shut down for a second time; and the most recent mSpy hack, which is unrelated to the beforehand talked about leak.
Lastly there may be TheTruthSpy, a community of stalkerware apps, which holds the doubtful file of getting been hacked or having leaked knowledge on at the least three separate events.
Hacked, however unrepented
Of those 23 stalkerware firms, eight have shut down, in response to TechCrunch’s tally.
In a primary and up to now distinctive case, the Federal Commerce Fee banned SpyFone and its chief govt, Scott Zuckerman, from working within the surveillance trade following an earlier safety lapse that uncovered victims’ knowledge. One other stalkerware operation linked to Zuckerman, known as SpyTrac, subsequently shut down following a TechCrunch investigation.
PhoneSpector and Highster, one other two firms that aren’t identified to have been hacked, additionally shut down after New York’s legal professional basic accused the businesses of explicitly encouraging prospects to make use of their software program for unlawful surveillance.
However an organization closing doesn’t imply it’s gone without end. As with Spyhide and SpyFone, a number of the identical house owners and builders behind a shuttered stalkerware maker merely rebranded.
“I do suppose that these hacks do issues. They do accomplish issues, they do put a dent in it,” Galperin mentioned. “However should you suppose that should you hack a stalkerware firm, that they’ll merely shake their fists, curse your title, disappear in a puff of blue smoke and by no means be seen once more, that has most undoubtedly not been the case.”
“What occurs most frequently, once you truly handle to kill a stalkerware firm, is that the stalkerware firm comes up like mushrooms after the rain,” Galperin added.
There’s some excellent news. In a report final yr, safety agency Malwarebytes mentioned that using stalkerware is declining, in response to its personal knowledge of consumers contaminated with such a software program. Additionally, Galperin reviews seeing a rise in adverse critiques of those apps, with prospects or potential prospects complaining they don’t work as supposed.
However, Galperin mentioned that it’s attainable that safety companies aren’t nearly as good at detecting stalkerware as they was once, or stalkers have moved from software-based surveillance to bodily surveillance enabled by AirTags and different Bluetooth-enabled trackers.
“Stalkerware doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Stalkerware is a component of an entire world of tech-enabled abuse,” Galperin mentioned.
Say no to stalkerware
Utilizing adware to watch your family members shouldn’t be solely unethical, it’s additionally unlawful in most jurisdictions, because it’s thought-about illegal surveillance.
That’s already a big cause to not use stalkerware. Then there may be the difficulty that stalkerware makers have confirmed time and time once more that they can not preserve knowledge safe — neither knowledge belonging to the purchasers nor their victims or targets.
Aside from spying on romantic companions and spouses, some folks use stalkerware apps to watch their kids. Whereas such a use, at the least in the USA, is authorized, it doesn’t imply utilizing stalkerware to snoop in your children’ cellphone isn’t creepy and unethical.
Even when it’s lawful, Galperin thinks mother and father shouldn’t spy on their kids with out telling them and with out their consent.
If mother and father do inform their kids and get their go-ahead, mother and father ought to avoid insecure and untrustworthy stalkerware apps and use parental monitoring instruments constructed into Apple telephones and tablets and Android gadgets which can be safer and function overtly.