iPhone app remotely spies on Windows computers Need help using your iPhone to spy on your spouse or children? Now there's an app which will show you just what they're typing, as long as they're on Windows. Spykey is basically a Windows keylogger which will transmit every key pressed to an iPhone application (£2.99 from the iTunes store). The app justifies itself with the …
I'm pretty sure the author means keylogging as in http://www.keyloggers.co/ for example.
Any software or hardware device that logs keystrokes and stores them for later perusal (or forwards them on for later analysis).
They have legitimate uses of course, but most uses are best described as ... nefarious. Password capturing, for example.
Apple's rules might not allow "spyware" on the iPhone (or iPad), but ... it would not be much use even if it existed, since any app that was downloaded onto an iOS device from the App Store onto the (non-jailbroken) device would not have access to any of the information it would need. Sure, there are APIs to get your location, and there may be one to get contacts and the like - but call logs? SMS message contents? Email? Very unlikely :)
All this means is that the software does exist (see http://www.iphonespyapp.com/ if you want to see some of the scary software you can get!), but it's been driven 'underground' simply by the technical requirements imposed by the iOS 'walled garden'.
This is why Apple don't want people jailbreaking their phones - it opens the phone up to all this kind of software! For the most part, your average customer would not WANT that stuff on their own phone (although a few might want to put it on someone else's!) - and that is exactly the difference between the 'open' (read: unmanaged) Android, and the 'curated' iOS.
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"... usual arguments about discovering cheating partners ..."
I often wondered about that mind set. If your relationship has reached a point where your using a key logger to work out if your partner is cheating, then the pair of you need to either sit down and talk or just plan split up.
Just a thought.
Generally by the time it's reached that point the time to sit down and split up is long past. Also with kids, homes, and bank accounts things tend to get nasty really quick.
We like to think our partner shares their problems with us, and we share our problem with them, but I've found that happens in few relationships. Most people tend to lock up the dark part of their personality up and pretend it doesn't exist. Then when depression or other mental health issues crop up, all of a sudden that person shows a radical change in their life. That's when the spy apps come out.. Then the private investigators, lawyers, accusations, name calling, etc.. all come out.
The moral of this story is, whatEVER your phone is, don't allow anyone unsupervised use of your phone nor possession of it if is unlocked.
This is, however, a good case for micro-SD cards being beneath the battery, so that tampering will be evident. Now, if you somehow download a rogue app to your phone, all bets are off... unless you're given to factory-resetting your phone evern other week, or secretly using a second, well-hidden phone while pretending that your compromised phone is your main phone.
So, if you're for whatever reason deprived of your phone, say, it is taken by lobby security at work, or by police, then if you're paranoid, you'd probably remove your removable data, purge, jack up, or overwrite data you know you sent to or from sites via that phone, and then give the phone an acid bath or put it under the seat of a taxi or long-distance train. Or, leave it on, and ditch it in an adult theater that might still exist in some locales.
But, you can bet your ass that intel agencies and police agencies probably can remotely compromise your phone no matter WHAT you do, other than turning it off, wrapping it in foil, and putting in a sound-suppressing box, inside a drum of oil, buried 9' under ground. Then, just early-term the contract and save the money. But, fi you NEED the phone, and want to play games, then take up relationships on a same-sex adult site and keep the minders busy reading until they get bored and automate the key-word/trigger-word processing (if they for some reason used live listeners).
As for spouses or partners who feel they are beign spied on, they can set up fake meetings in limited access areas, then play the spy game by doubling back to check for tails. Having a well-disguised hat camera or buttonhole camera at for points, doing this about 15 times means a trail who is a PI too poor to have 25 tails on call will eventually and non-coincidentally appear in more than one piece of footage...
What I want is quite simple. To buy a computer on which I can install whatever software I want, and no one else can install any software on without my knowledge and permission.
A curated iPhone doesn't give me that, and ordinary operating systems which are vulnerable to hacking don't give me that.
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