maia arson crimew
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, that's also why I put so much emphasis on doing media work about this, on getting more people to talk about this and getting more awareness of this out there to the point where I'm willing to work with more conservative newspapers on this because everyone needs to know about this at the end of the day. This is how we stop people from falling victims to this.
Behind the Bastards
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Most people who are a victim of stalkerware apps have never heard of stalkerware apps before. And I think that's one of the biggest ways to tackle this. And on the other hand, we also have...
Behind the Bastards
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I think another big leverage point with how many of these are getting hacked, because none of these apps are very secure, that's another thing, is this can also be leveraged against the abusers in this scenario.
Behind the Bastards
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I think just pointing out to them that all of these apps get hacked all the time and that this is how they get found out, that this is how their data of them as abusers ends up landing on the internet, I think that's also a very important angle at the end of the day. It's just to make it clear, like, yeah, no, not even you are like...
Behind the Bastards
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secure from this having consequences for your life, beyond direct interpersonal or legal consequences. This can, and in the past has, result in your email address being on a list of people who do abuse to people online. You don't want to be on such a list. I think that's also important, just to like... point out there isn't one stock of our app that's not eventually going to get hacked.
Behind the Bastards
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There is a big war against these apps. There are so many different hacking groups that keep sending me data from these. I'm already working on another article that already, once again, affects the data of I think like 80,000 more abusers, and it's just the abuser data this time, but I'm still going to report on it. This is not going to stop.
Behind the Bastards
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It's also not going to stop when I stop reporting on this myself. There's been work before me done on this. I also, the first time I got involved in finding Stalkerware was back in 2020. People have been hacking these apps forever and will keep hacking them. Just look at the Wikipedia page for Stalkerware. There's an ever-growing list of these apps that have been hacked.
Behind the Bastards
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And I think at this point, the official count being kept by one of the people at TechCrunch is that 13 apps, a few of which have been hacked two or three times. Yeah. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. And also, they don't care. Like I said, it's a cash grab. It's nothing else. There's a few apps that are a little more than a cash grab, but it's usually just because they're made... Like there's still a cash grab, but they're like more well-made, but that's because they're a cash grab from a company that has better developers or more money to do the initial investment.
Behind the Bastards
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The thing is also like most of these companies don't have a lot of initial investment. And I think the important thing to consider as well here is one big area of this that I have not
Behind the Bastards
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yet started tackling but I do want to like look into more sometime is a big reason this industry is so big and most of these apps have a lot of users despite there being so many of them is the affiliate marketing industry once again our very beloved friend yeah all of these apps are parts of various affiliate marketing networks.
Behind the Bastards
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Some of them started by stalkerware company, and some of them just other things that advertise all the shady things, like all those phone number locator apps or whatever. That's also part of those same affiliate marketing networks. There's lots of money flowing here, and there's lots of money flowing to very big tech YouTube channels.
Behind the Bastards
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And I might soon have some proof for some of that, but that's how these are advertised. It's everyone who advertises Stalkerware to you who has a big platform is doing that because they're getting money, not for any other reason.
Behind the Bastards
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payment platforms because a lot of payment platforms look at this and go wait hold on yeah so yeah i was going to talk about that a little bit that's an angle we've also been fighting on a lot like me and sang we work on most of these stories together like i it's kind of funny we both got each other into the stock of our thing back in 2020 as i mentioned that was the first time i stumbled into a stock of our app with a security issue
Behind the Bastards
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I reached out to some random journalist at TechCrunch about it, and now he is the only one talking about this forever because I reached out to him that one time and he got sucked into this horrible, horrible world of spying. But yeah, one of the things we focus on a lot is reporting these companies to their payment providers, to their server hosters.
Behind the Bastards
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To the point where sometimes for weeks, Zach will just wait for them to switch to a new provider after we got them taken out from PayPal and then from their other PayPal account where they're just using the checkout experience from one of their completely unrelated software projects, which they will later claim is not related at all and they are different companies and whatever.
Behind the Bastards
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But then, like, eventually they get taken down from that as well. And usually we can get them taken down from most, like, Western hosters. Like, especially US hosters will immediately take them down. You do not want to risk being... The company hosting is by and by on US grounds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, same with EU hosters.
Behind the Bastards
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The few companies that we've seen that were on Hetzner, they immediately react because it's like, yeah, no, under EU law, you don't want to risk that. Because you don't want to host that. There's no reason for you to host shit like that. It will have image consequences. And that's an important thing that is maybe also something you can do as more like a grassroots thing.
Behind the Bastards
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It's also like if you find one of these apps and if you see, oh, they're using like PayPal or whatever, just reach out. I think PayPal is even harder to reach as like just an average layperson. Don't expect them to reply. They might still take action. You will have to manually check. PayPal doesn't really reply to things ever.
Behind the Bastards
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but yeah same as with like hosting company if you see they're hosted on like a European or American hosting company just reach out be like hey there's someone running spyware on your thing also use the word spyware not stalker where they will not know what that is and it is spyware so yeah And that can usually get them taken down.
Behind the Bastards
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And often they don't have proper backups and will have a few months of data missing. And it's like, yeah, that's how you slowly grind them to a halt. Yeah. And also, once again, like if you have tips about any of these companies, be it having found a vulnerability just or insider info, especially, I'm always very happy about insider info. You can reach out to either me or Zach Whitaker.
Behind the Bastards
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We're both very happy to talk about this. Yeah. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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It's interesting that for once we can use the very restrictive and conservative rules of payment providers for our good.
Behind the Bastards
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yeah but yeah basically any of the big payment providers will not respect something like this some of the like small regional odd ones probably won't really give a they have no reason to it's like revenue for them but yeah it's generally worth trying and i'm always glad like if someone just reaches out to these companies and we don't have to do that ourselves
Behind the Bastards
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I think me and a few other people actively working on this are doing more than enough work currently. But yeah, just if you find one of these things, don't go digging too deep. It's a depressing world. But if you stumble upon one of these somewhere or whatever, just report them. It's going to disrupt their operations, and if it happens often enough, they might just give up. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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And I mean, in cases like the Truth Spy, they are willing to do extreme amounts of fraud to get to money easily, because they started with mostly the market they could get with their Vietnamese payment providers, right? Eventually they realized, well, the US is like this really big market, right? But for really easy like US stuff, we need like a PayPal thing, right?
Behind the Bastards
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So they made like over 12 fake American identities with fake passports and fake addresses and signed up to PayPal a whole bunch of times and had various employees at the company move money around. Yeah, that's... Obviously not a thing the US government will like if you do that, generally speaking. They moved like millions like that, so yeah. Which is pretty crazy.
Behind the Bastards
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The amount of money that's moving in this industry is crazy. Yeah. Actually, most of these apps will be half-broken, which no one ever complains about because it's shady. You don't expect... If you go online and you search for something shady, anything, be it piracy or whatever, you don't expect it to be the best experience ever.
Behind the Bastards
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You know you're getting some weird service and it's probably going to be half-broken. But yeah, most of these talk-over apps start at $40 a month.
Behind the Bastards
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and more and then sometimes for more features you pay like up to 60 or 70 or so and then all of these have like tens of thousands of users sometimes hundreds of thousands of users yeah you can do the math yourself it's crazy this is a really big industry which makes it so crazy to me that it's like not a thing that's talked about more especially in like feminist spaces and things like that because this is such a like big angle of like modern tech enabled abuse that they'd
Behind the Bastards
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yeah, really think should be more of a topic. Especially on the left, like this is bad.
Behind the Bastards
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I agree entirely. And also like the whole thing with like all of this data being so easily accepted, your data can end up getting sold on some dark web forum. You're both as the abuser and as the target, right? Or the government can find these. This is not me making a statement of that's a thing that's happening. But there's nothing preventing the government from hacking these companies.
Behind the Bastards
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Whenever I get these datasets, and it's always hard to work with datasets that include non-consensually collected data of people, right? Yes. I do always, like, do some due diligence checks, like, mostly trying to find if the government is using a specific app. Sometimes, yes, there is always, like, the odd correction facility officer who has signed up for one or two of these apps.
Behind the Bastards
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Or, like, education people and whatever. But then I also sometimes search through the text messages for just some code words. And the amount of people moving trucks who have stalkerware on their phones, it's, you know...
Behind the Bastards
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Or like if an informant like sends you this data, like you're not going to say no, right?
Behind the Bastards
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And also you don't really need to disclose that because it's information you got from an informant. You do not need to disclose that informant in court ever. So yeah, it's like...
Behind the Bastards
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another thing where I like for one of the apps I got data for there was some indication that at some point the Colombian national police did a bigger evaluation of using commercials spyware for their use because you're in a country with not that big of a like police budget in comparison you can't afford like all the cool Israeli tools everyone else has so what do you do you just look for random apps you can find you know yeah you find the Walmart the Kirkland version I guess
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. I don't think most of them moved forward with this because these apps fucking suck. Like, they're bad. Like, that's the other thing. Like, they don't even really do their job well. They're bad. And you don't know who is behind them. You cannot even go up to someone and be like, yo, don't do this. You also cannot go to the cops and be like, this company is scamming me because, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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I assume some people have probably done that before, but it does involve admitting to a crime. So, yeah. It's like, yeah, these companies just get away with not giving a shit about their product because like, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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yeah well i think that's that's all we had thank you maya for both the work you're doing and for talking to us yeah is there anything you wanted to plug before we uh we roll out here just my just my blog i think where like i do this journalistic work and also more there's about to be another cool investigative piece out soon which tangentially involves more tracking and whatever uh and also involves like hollywood and more it's it's it's it's a crazy big story uh i i promise uh
Behind the Bastards
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That will be out hopefully in a month or so. But yeah, my blog at maya.crimeu.gay. Crime U as in crime W. Yeah, and gay as in gay. Yeah, just check out my blog. At the bottom of the blog, there's all my links to my social media. For anyone who's listening to this and has been wondering where I am, I am back on Twitter as well. Yeah. For now. For now.
Behind the Bastards
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But yeah, I am back on Twitter. I'm posting there sometimes. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, so stalkerware as a category encompasses a number of different types of apps. Most of them on the surface advertise themselves as parental control software, which is already bad enough, just to be clear. That is advertised for spying on your children's phone, seeing their location in real time, seeing their...
Behind the Bastards
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messages that they receive any photo they take ostensibly this is to like prevent bullying and help with them when they get depressed because they don't trust you and talk to you for whatever reason but obviously a lot of these are then furthermore because that's like that sure that's a like target audience that's a demographic you can advertise to but then there's this even bigger potential target demographic of people who are insecure in their relationship most
Behind the Bastards
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mostly men, not only men, but who are then sold this idea that they can use software like this for stalking their partner, for finding out if they are cheating on you, things like that, which is obviously an even bigger problem, which once again, not to discount the problems that spying on your children is already like bad enough.
Behind the Bastards
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But yeah, this leads to this whole like big industry of these apps being used by partners against each other. Like also just by people like against anyone in their surroundings that they suspect might be doing something shady, might be like, talking behind their backs.
Behind the Bastards
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It obviously turns into this obsessive thing, especially if you solve this idea that this app can magically solve interpersonal issues. With anything that sells you this magic idea of being able to solve any problem that these people People start kind of spying on everyone in their circles. Some of them, not everyone. A lot of people only spy on their partner or their child or whatever.
Behind the Bastards
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But it often spirals out of control into this controlling everyone and their surroundings, knowing what everyone is up to, where they are, and spending hundreds of dollars a month on doing so. And yeah, that's pretty fucked up if you ask me. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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Yes, it's specifically a thing that also most of these apps will have, like a disclaimer at the bottom that is like, this might be illegal in your jurisdiction, and please ask for consent before doing this. And then they have lots of tutorials on how to install this on someone's device without their consent. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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it's like always like a we do not take any like we we it's not our fault if you break the law basically which obviously like it's so far not a lot of this has been challenged in court but i don't think this would hold up too long like i'm not a lawyer but uh i don't think just saying we make a product to do crimes with if you do crimes with it it's not i mean it works for the gun industry so yeah
Behind the Bastards
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The thing with stalkerware as well is that, like, a lot of them will also explicitly say the only real use of this we allow you to use it for is to surveil your child, which unfortunately is legal in most jurisdictions because children are property of their parents. Yeah. In quotes, because I do not agree with that. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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But I think it is important to point this out very early for anyone who's listening to this because they think they might have stalkerware on their phones or because they know they have stalkerware on their phones. You can use this in a domestic abuse case. This is explicit proof that abuse is happening, no matter anything else. Because that's the thing generally with domestic abuse cases.
Behind the Bastards
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It's really hard to prove abuse is happening. stalkerware, and any other type of spying device, like also physical GPS trackers and stuff, that is immediate proof that there's controlling behavior going on, that you are being spied on. This cannot only be used and is explicitly admissible evidence. This also usually makes cases worse, not for you.
Behind the Bastards
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can potentially add charges and make it more serious and it can help making cops give a shit about like abuse which yeah I hate that I need to say that but yeah it's like it makes it more serious because yeah there's like spyware and whatever it's easy evidence first off like you can prove they're spying on you and second if you are in one of the states where that violates the law then you can immediately say this person is breaking the law like we don't have to debate whether or not they've crossed a line
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, and even if it doesn't directly break the law to spy on someone, on a partner, depending on the region, it can be kind of a hazy thing, especially if it's a device you might co-own, if it's a state with co-possession or whatever in the US. I do not know US law very much around this, but yeah. There's laws like that, but usually...
Behind the Bastards
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still the fact that you're being spied on can be used as proof for other abuse things you might be alleging, because it's like hard proof that something is happening. And also usually these companies will somewhat have to respond to Sapuena, so they will have to give out who the account owner is behind the spying on your phone.
Behind the Bastards
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For some of them, there's also tools that help you find out who is spying on you, or someone with a forensic background can help.
Behind the Bastards
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December last year, up until there, is the data. It can pretty much tell you if you've been spying on using this specific tool until then. For other stuff, there's also guides, usually on TechCrunch and otherwise also on stopstalkerware.org, which is the US coalition against stalkerware.
Behind the Bastards
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And also just generally, I think a lot of more local anti-stalking, anti-abuse orgs are not as informed yet as they should be, but there's still a good point also to reach out to or Like, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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depends like for some for some of these it will like get signal messages whatsapp messages and everything generally by reading the notification content because like from notifications you know like what messages are have been like received sometimes it will only then have to receive messages and not the same messages often these also include like a keylogger component that maps
Behind the Bastards
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messages then sent back as well. It depends a lot what these apps collect. But for most of them, also the collection for other texting apps is usually kind of broken. None of these apps are really well-maintained. They're mostly just quick cash grabs. The harder to maintain features usually don't really work.
Behind the Bastards
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Or at the very least disable them on the lock screen on Android. I think that's also possible on iOS, but I think iOS doesn't show message content on the lock screen anyways. I'm not sure anymore. But yeah, it's just also small things like that.
Behind the Bastards
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And also one of the key tells that someone probably tampered with your phone, especially for Android, is if Google Play Protect is disabled and you do not remember disabling it for
Behind the Bastards
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something else it was almost definitely disabled because someone installed something on your phone just try re-enabling it and it will probably tell you something the thing also to keep in mind if you find stalkerware on your phone please get professional help do not just delete it do not like necessarily confront whoever you think might be your abuser about it unless you're very sure that that's the situation you can handle because like yeah that
Behind the Bastards
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That is one of those things that bringing it up or just deleting it can very quickly lead to complicating the situation a lot.
Behind the Bastards
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I think one of the biggest things, and also why I do the work I do with hacking it, with encouraging others to send me data, be that insiders from these companies, sending it either to me or TechCrunch specifically currently, because me and TechCrunch are the only people really doing journalism on this regularly. And the important thing with journalism and all of this is awareness.
Behind the Bastards
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It's very important to create awareness about this. That's also why I do the media work with being on this podcast and things like that. I think the most important thing is to make people aware, like, talk about this in your feminist circles or whatever, things like that. Yeah, especially bring it up just also in, like, general info things about abuse or how to detect abuse.
Behind the Bastards
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I think the most important thing to do against stalkerware is demystify it, because most people don't even know that this is a thing, that there's just commercially available spyware that anyone can install on your phone. It's just important to not give in to some sort of paranoia as with any of these things.
Behind the Bastards
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It's just important to generate awareness, talk about it, spread these articles, and let friends know that this is a potential thing. Yeah, the hard thing with this is that obviously it would probably help if there was some sort of legislation against some of this. It's going to be very hard to get any proper legislation that ends this industry.
Behind the Bastards
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Because in most Western countries, which are the only countries which unfortunately would have enough power to actually get these apps shut down, because that's the world we live in, But the problem there is usually that like this notion that children are owned by their parents is too strong to really make a full case against these apps.
Behind the Bastards
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And at the very best, what I can like the very best I'm kind of hoping for from from legislators. It's just a ban on advertising these apps on use against other adults, which would be big already, but that doesn't really solve the issue because there's still going to be enough people who know of their use for use against adults and there's going to be enough people on like Reddit
Behind the Bastards
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threads talking about, hey, well, yeah, oh, you're not sure if your government is cheating on you. You can just use this app. That's also how most of this marketing for this works. It's just, yeah, at the end of the day, this is like a patriarchal issue. So, yeah. I think that's also why I am so focused on the hacking and blowing these companies up and showing who's behind them.
Behind the Bastards
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Because at the end of the day, the most effective thing we have against these companies is like the grassroots movement of making them too scared to run in this business, making it not profitable enough. Because as I said, most of this is like quick cash grabs from like web design studios and outsourcing companies.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, that are just making a quick buck from this because otherwise they don't get paid enough. Like that's the sad thing really is how much of this industry is in all of these countries, Western companies outsource their IT to because there's lots of IT companies there and they are entirely reliant on like, like, Western companies giving them very underpaid tasks.
Behind the Bastards
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And then you have this problem that you now have a bunch of employees and not enough money to always pay them. And what do you do? You, like, find some weird niche of, like, a tech product you can quickly build. Yeah. And this is, like, one of those easy niches. It's, like, always the scummy stuff.
Behind the Bastards
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And, like, yeah, it's... That's also why, like, so many of these companies are, like, based out of Vietnam, out of Iran and whatever. It's just companies that already have it hard enough... to do business globally where the IT industry is falling apart because there's not enough local customers in anything that's international. You're just the cheap workforce, right?
Behind the Bastards
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So yeah, it's once again also like a class problem. Most people working in this industry know that they're working in a scummy industry. Yeah. Of course. But like, yeah, you got to get paid. And that's... Yeah. And that's like why I think making it more scary to operate in this industry is like the way to go.
Behind the Bastards
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Because like with just like these like four hacks that have happened against these companies over the last like half a year or so, two of them, three of them, three of them have shut down completely. Others seem to be slowly moving towards just building other software primarily. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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It's just like, yeah, it's like with any other shady industry that the best we can do is just to not make it profitable to run the software because at the very best, anything else we would get is just pushing them more into the shadows, which is not going to solve the issue at all.