EFF has, for many years, raised the alarm about the proliferation of stalkerware—commercially-available apps designed to be installed covertly on another person’s device to exfiltrate data from that device without their knowledge. We’ve teamed up with the researchers at AV Comparatives to test the most popular anti-virus products for Android to see how well they detect the

New York, September 10, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely alarmed by the installation of spyware on two Kenyan filmmakers’ phones while the devices were in police custody, and calls on authorities to drop a case against them and two other filmmakers and ensure that journalists are not further targeted for surveillance. Forensic analysis...

Google has suspended the Firebase account of Catwatchful following a TechCrunch investigation. The spyware operation was caught using Google's own servers to host and run its surveillance app, which was stealthily monitoring thousands of people's phones.

The spyware operation's exposed customer email addresses and passwords were shared with data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned.

The trio of spyware apps — hacked earlier this year — no longer work.

Another consumer-grade spyware operation was hacked in June 2024, which exposed thousands of Apple Account credentials.

A bug in the Android and iPhone monitoring operations allows anyone to access private data exfiltrated from a victim's device.

The proliferation of surveillance technology in recent years has quietly transformed the landscape of personal privacy and security. Tools once reserved for law enforcement and intelligence agencies are now readily available to the general public, often marketed under the guise of child safety (parental control) or employee monitoring.