FTC orders company to quit surveillance app business

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FTC for the first time bans a company that makes so-called stalkerware — software used to surreptitiously track a cellphone user’s activities and location — from continuing in the surveillance app business.

Wednesday’s action applies to the marketer of SpyFone, Puerto Rico-based Support King LLC, and its CEO, Scott Zuckerman. Such commercial surveillance products secretly obtain unfettered access to someone’s smartphone, leading to serious harm,Support King marketed SpyFone as a tool to monitor the activities of children and employees. But it neglected to prevent stalkers and domestic abusers from using it for surveillance, the FTC said.

The FTC found that not only is SpyFone sneaky — no icon appears on a phone after it is installed — but its developers also were negligent in protecting the data it collected on unsuspecting victims from hackers. It said information from about 2,200 people had been compromised in a hacker’s breach of the company’s server.

“Federal agencies have long been lax when it comes to allowing companies to peddle surveillance products with impunity,” FTC commissioner Rohit Chopra said in a statement.

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