Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to It Could Happen here, the podcast that's
Speaker 2: happening here in your ear. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that we love talking about here is a critical ingredient
Speaker 2: towards creeping authoritarianism, towards growing corporate control and surveillance over
Speaker 2: all of our lives, which is of course technology that
Speaker 2: makes it even easier to monitor you than it already is.
Speaker 2: We're not talking primarily about like the government monitoring you,
Speaker 2: because they can, you know, do stuff like just pull
Speaker 2: your phone data from a you know which cell towers
Speaker 2: is pinged. We're talking about the kind of stuff that
Speaker 2: allows basically whoever can get an app on your phone
Speaker 2: to track and stalk you. And Yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 2: first introduce Mia Wong. Mia, welcome to the show that
Speaker 2: you also host.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm here.
Speaker 2: So what are we what are we talking about today?
Speaker 2: And who are we talking with?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we are talking about stalker wear, which is
Speaker 4: the sort of broad name for the category of software
Speaker 4: that Robert's been talking about. And we are talking about
Speaker 4: someone who hacked, well.
Speaker 2: A stoker ware stalker.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: One of the stockerware companies, my Aris and Crime, the
Speaker 4: fame hacker, the no fly list. Yeah, returning guests, always
Speaker 4: happy to have you on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, always happy to be on. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I think I think, I don't know. I think
Speaker 4: there's a real tendency among and I see this among
Speaker 4: leftists a lot, for kind of good reasons and kind
Speaker 4: of not good reasons to really only focus on state
Speaker 4: and like large corporate actors in terms of surveillance. And
Speaker 4: that's a mistake.
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so I guess I guess the place where
Speaker 4: I want to start before we get into the specific
Speaker 4: company that you do, is it still called owned?
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 5: It's fine to call it owned or pond or whatever.
Speaker 5: I still do that. Sometimes people get confused.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, But before we get into that, I
Speaker 4: want to I want to ask you a bit because
Speaker 4: you've done a lot of sort of I guess you
Speaker 4: could call it research, both actual research wise and then
Speaker 4: in terms of poking around their servers.
Speaker 5: Research and journalism and whatever. Do you want to call it? Yeah, axic?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I wanted to just start off by asking
Speaker 4: if you can give sort of like a brief summary
Speaker 4: of what stalker ware is.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So, so stalker ware like as a category, encompasses
Speaker 5: like a number of different types of apps. Most of them,
Speaker 5: like on the service, advertise themselves as like parental control software,
Speaker 5: which is already bad enough. Just to be clear that
Speaker 5: there's like advertised for like spying on your children's phone,
Speaker 5: like seeing their location in real time, seeing their mass
Speaker 5: such as that they receive any photo they take. Ostensibly
Speaker 5: this is to prevent bullying and help with them when
Speaker 5: they get depressed because they don't trust you and talk
Speaker 5: to you for whatever reason. But obviously a lot of
Speaker 5: these are then furthermore, because that's like that, sure, that's
Speaker 5: a like target audience, that's a demographic you can advertise too.
Speaker 5: But then there's this even bigger potential target demographic of
Speaker 5: people who are insecure in their relationship, mostly men, not
Speaker 5: only men, but who are then solved this idea that
Speaker 5: they can use software like this for stalking their partner,
Speaker 5: for finding out if they are cheating on you, things
Speaker 5: like that, which is obviously an even bigger problem, which
Speaker 5: once again not to discount the problems that's spying on
Speaker 5: your children. It's already like bad enough, but yeah, lead
Speaker 5: this leads to this whole big industry of these apps
Speaker 5: being used by partners against each other like also just
Speaker 5: by people, like against anyone in the in their surroundings
Speaker 5: that they suspect might be doing something, might be like
Speaker 5: talking behind their backs. It often kind of turns into
Speaker 5: like it obviously turns into this obsessive thing, especially if
Speaker 5: you're solved this idea that this this app can magically
Speaker 5: solve like interpersonal issues, like with anything that sells you
Speaker 5: this magic idea of being able to solve any problem.
Speaker 5: That these people start kind of spying on everyone in
Speaker 5: their like circles to some of them, like not everyone,
Speaker 5: most like a lot of people on the spying like
Speaker 5: their partner or like their child or whatever. But it
Speaker 5: often like spirals out of control into this like controlling
Speaker 5: everyone in their surroundings, knowing what everyone is up to
Speaker 5: where they are, and spending like hundreds of dollars a
Speaker 5: month on doing so. And yeah, that's pretty fucked up
Speaker 5: if you ask me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things that's interesting too. It's also in
Speaker 2: a lot of cases illegal. This is going to vary,
Speaker 2: you know, from country to country, in state to state,
Speaker 2: but in the US there are states like California, which
Speaker 2: gets pointed out in the very good Tech Crunch investigation
Speaker 2: on truth spy where there are really strict laws that
Speaker 2: journalists like you have to a bias to win, you
Speaker 2: can record someone that these these apps absolutely break.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's specifically a thing that doesn't. Most of these
Speaker 5: app will have like a disclaimer at the bond that
Speaker 5: is like this might be illegal and your jurisdiction and
Speaker 5: please ask for consent before doing this, and then they
Speaker 5: have lots of tutorials on how to install this in
Speaker 5: someone's device without their consent. Yeah, but it's like always
Speaker 5: like a we do not take any like we we
Speaker 5: it's not our fault if you break the law basically,
Speaker 5: which obviously, like it's so far not a lot of
Speaker 5: this has been challenged in court. But I don't think
Speaker 5: this would hold up too long. I'm not, but I
Speaker 5: don't think just saying we make a product to do
Speaker 5: crimes with if you do crimes of it, it's not
Speaker 5: I mean it works for the gun industry. So yeah.
Speaker 2: The difference is that like the with the gun industry,
Speaker 2: it's a product where there is a legal and an illegal,
Speaker 2: like clear way to do it.
Speaker 5: The thing with stocker were as well is that like
Speaker 5: a lot of them will also explicitly say the only
Speaker 5: real use of this we allow you to do to
Speaker 5: use it for is to surveill or child, which unfortunately
Speaker 5: is legal in most jurisdictions because children are property of
Speaker 5: their parents. Yeah quotes because I do not agree with that, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of those things where people using it,
Speaker 2: like someone installing an app on their axes or their
Speaker 2: their partner's phone or whatever without consent, could very easily
Speaker 2: would lose any court case, whether or not the company
Speaker 2: would get in trouble. I think it's going to rely
Speaker 2: a lot on the stuff the videos they're posting about,
Speaker 2: like how to put how to get these apps on
Speaker 2: people's phones without them knowing, but like they do have
Speaker 2: that out with like no, it's just for surveilling children, which.
Speaker 5: Is great, and for anyone else you need consent or whatever.
Speaker 5: But I think it is important, yeah, to point this
Speaker 5: out very early for anyone who's listening to this because
Speaker 5: they think they might have stock aver on their phones,
Speaker 5: or because they know they have stock averre on their phones.
Speaker 5: You can use this in a domestic abuse case, well immediately,
Speaker 5: this is explicit proof that abuse is happening, no matter
Speaker 5: anything else, because like that's the thing generally with domestic
Speaker 5: abuse case, it's really hard to prove abuses happening. Stalkerware
Speaker 5: and any other type of spying device like also physical
Speaker 5: GPS trackers and stuff that is immediate proof that there
Speaker 5: is a there's controlling behavior going on, that you are
Speaker 5: being spied on. This it cannot only be used and
Speaker 5: there's explicit admissible evidence. This is also usually like makes
Speaker 5: cases first like not for you like it just yeah,
Speaker 5: it like can potentially add charges and make it more serious,
Speaker 5: and that it can help making cops give a shit
Speaker 5: about like abuse, which yeah, I hate that I need
Speaker 5: to say that, but yeah, it's like it makes it
Speaker 5: more serious because there's like spyware and whatever.
Speaker 2: It's easy evidence first off, like you can prove they're
Speaker 2: spying on you, and second, if you are in one
Speaker 2: of the states where that violates the law, then you
Speaker 2: can immediately say this person is breaking the law, like
Speaker 2: this is we don't have to debate whether or not
Speaker 2: they've they've crossed the line.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And even if it doesn't directly break the law
Speaker 5: to spy on someone on a partner like it, depending
Speaker 5: on the on the on the region, it can be
Speaker 5: kind of a hazy thing, especially if it's a device
Speaker 5: you might co own if it's like a state where
Speaker 5: you where with like code possession or whatever. In the US,
Speaker 5: I do not know US law very much around this,
Speaker 5: but yeah, there's like laws like that. But usually still
Speaker 5: the fact that you're being spied on can be used
Speaker 5: as proof for other abuse things you might be alleging,
Speaker 5: because it's like hard proof that something is happening. And
Speaker 5: also usually these companies will somewhat have to respond to
Speaker 5: some point US, so they will have to give out
Speaker 5: like who that account on there is behind like the
Speaker 5: spying on your phone for some of them, we can
Speaker 5: also there's also tools that help you find out who
Speaker 5: is spying on you, or there's like someone with forensic
Speaker 5: background can help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think people. One thing we should note
Speaker 2: is that if you're kind of curious, has my device
Speaker 2: been infected by some of these tools, one the one
Speaker 2: that we've been talking about most truth spy. If you
Speaker 2: go to that tech Crunch article or to my art
Speaker 2: it also has a link yet or to ye to
Speaker 2: your article on your website. There's a tool you can
Speaker 2: use where you it'll tell you how to get your
Speaker 2: im SI I think I am I Yeah, which you
Speaker 2: just dial a thing on your phone and it gives
Speaker 2: you that number. It's basically how you identify specific bones
Speaker 2: and you plug that in. It will let you know
Speaker 2: if your device has been compromised.
Speaker 5: Now like December last year up until there is the
Speaker 5: data and if you yeah, it can pretty much tell
Speaker 5: you if you've been spined on using this specific tool
Speaker 5: until then. For other stuff, there's also guides, usually on
Speaker 5: TechCrunch and otherwise also on Stop stockerbar dot ARC, which
Speaker 5: is the US Coalition against stalker Bear, and also just
Speaker 5: generally I think a lot of like more local anti stocking,
Speaker 5: anti abuse works are not as informed yet as they
Speaker 5: should be, but there's still a good point also to
Speaker 5: reach out to or like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: One of my questions about truth Spy that I'm hoping
Speaker 2: you can answer is I know that you can like
Speaker 2: text messages get transferred via it, your call records, all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, get and who you were calling.
Speaker 2: Does that include messages for like encrypted apps like Signal
Speaker 2: or is that not accessible through this?
Speaker 5: It depends, Like for some of these, it will like
Speaker 5: get signal messages, what's the messages and everything generally by
Speaker 5: reading the notification contents because like from notifications, you know,
Speaker 5: like what messages are have been like received. Sometimes it
Speaker 5: will only then have the received messages and not the
Speaker 5: set messages. Often these also include like a key logger
Speaker 5: component that maps messages then sent back as well. It
Speaker 5: depends a lot what these apps collect, but for most
Speaker 5: of them, also the collection for other texting apps is
Speaker 5: usually kind of broken. None of these apps are really
Speaker 5: well maintained. They're mostly just quick cash graps, yeah, are
Speaker 5: there to maintain features usually don't really work.
Speaker 2: And it seems like based on that, one thing people
Speaker 2: can do outside of checking to see if their device
Speaker 2: has been compromised, is do stuff like turn off notifications
Speaker 2: for appsling Signal, Right, and that's that's actually just generally
Speaker 2: good advice. Notifications are a compromise of the security that
Speaker 2: Signal offers. Don't have them enabled, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or at the very least disabled them on the
Speaker 5: lock screen on Android. Yeah, I don't know how. I
Speaker 5: think that's also possible on iOS, but I think I
Speaker 5: doesn't show message content on the lock screen anyways. I'm
Speaker 5: not sure anymore. But yeah, it's just also small things
Speaker 5: like that, And also like one of the key tells
Speaker 5: that someone probably tampered with your phone, especially for Android,
Speaker 5: is if Google play Protect is disabled and you do
Speaker 5: not remember disabling it for something else, it was almost
Speaker 5: definitely disabled because someone installed something on your phone. Just
Speaker 5: try re enabling it. Then they will probably tell you something.
Speaker 5: The thing also to keep in mind if you find
Speaker 5: stockaware on your phone, please get professional help. Do not
Speaker 5: just delete it. Do not like necessarily confront whoever you
Speaker 5: think might be your abuser about it unless you're very
Speaker 5: sure that that's the situation you can handle, because like, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's one of those things that like bringing it up
Speaker 5: or just deleting it can very quickly lead to like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: complicating the situation a lot.
Speaker 4: You know what else complicates the situation.
Speaker 3: These ads and we are back.
Speaker 2: So when it comes to the actual fight against this stuff,
Speaker 2: obviously what you're doing is a big part of it.
Speaker 2: Getting inside these companies and finding out like what they're
Speaker 2: doing and their capabilities is huge for in terms of
Speaker 2: like what regular people are people who are interested in
Speaker 2: becoming activists about this can do. What does the what
Speaker 2: is the struggle to actually fight this stuff look like?
Speaker 2: Like how do we how do we put a bullet
Speaker 2: in this industry's head, I.
Speaker 5: Think one of the biggest things, and also like why
Speaker 5: I do the work I do with like hacking it
Speaker 5: with encouraging others to like send me data, be that
Speaker 5: insiders from these companies sending it idea to me, or
Speaker 5: like tech Crunch specifically currently because like me and tech
Speaker 5: crunch are like the only people really doing like journalism
Speaker 5: on this like regularly. And the important thing with like
Speaker 5: journalism and all of this is like awareness. It's very
Speaker 5: important to create awareness about this. That's also why I
Speaker 5: do the media work with like being on this podcast
Speaker 5: and things like that. I think the most important thing
Speaker 5: is to make people aware, like talk about this in
Speaker 5: your feminist circles or whatever. Things like that especially bring
Speaker 5: it up just also in like general info things about
Speaker 5: abuse or how to detect abuse. I think the most
Speaker 5: important thing to do against stocker whereas demestify it, because
Speaker 5: most people don't even know that this is a thing,
Speaker 5: that this is, like that there's just commercially available spyware
Speaker 5: anyone can install on your phone. It's as important to
Speaker 5: not like give in to some sort of paranoia as
Speaker 5: with any of these things. It's just important to like, yeah,
Speaker 5: generate awareness about it and like spread these articles, let
Speaker 5: friends know that this is a potential thing, and then yeah,
Speaker 5: the hard thing with this is that like obviously it
Speaker 5: should will probably help if there was some sort of
Speaker 5: legislation against some of this, It's going to be very
Speaker 5: hard to get any proper legislation that ends this industry
Speaker 5: because in most Western countries, which are the only countries
Speaker 5: which unfortunately would have enough power to like actually get
Speaker 5: these apps shut down, because that's the world we live in.
Speaker 5: But the problem there is usually that like this notion
Speaker 5: that children are owned by their parents is too strong
Speaker 5: to really make a full case against these apps. And
Speaker 5: at the very best what I can, like the very
Speaker 5: best time kind of hoping for from from legislators is
Speaker 5: just a ban on advertising these apps on use against
Speaker 5: other adults, which would be big already, But that doesn't
Speaker 5: really solve the issue because there's still going to be
Speaker 5: enough people who know of their use for use against
Speaker 5: adults and their there's going to be enough people on
Speaker 5: like Creddit threads talking about, hey, well yeah, you oh
Speaker 5: you're not sure if your government is cheating on you, look,
Speaker 5: you can just use this app, you know. That's also
Speaker 5: how most of this marketing for this works. It's just yeah,
Speaker 5: at the end of the day, this is like a
Speaker 5: patriarchal issue. So yeah, I think that's also why, like
Speaker 5: I am so focused on like the hacking and the
Speaker 5: like blowing these companies up and showing like who's behind them.
Speaker 5: It's because at the end of the day, the most
Speaker 5: effective thing we have against these companies is like the
Speaker 5: grassroots movement of making them too scared to run in
Speaker 5: this business, making it not profitable enough, because as I said,
Speaker 5: most of this is like quick cash grabs from like
Speaker 5: web design studios and outsourcing companies. Yeah that a're just
Speaker 5: making a quick buck from this because otherwise they don't
Speaker 5: get paid enough. Like that's this sad thing really is
Speaker 5: how much of this industry is in all of these countries.
Speaker 5: Western companies outsource their IT too, because there's lots of
Speaker 5: IT companies there and they are entirely reliant on like
Speaker 5: Western companies giving them very underpaid tasks. And yeah, I
Speaker 5: have this problem that you now have a bunch of
Speaker 5: employees and not enough money to always pay them. And
Speaker 5: what do you do you like find some weird niche
Speaker 5: of like a tech product you can quickly build. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and this is like one of those easy niches. It's
Speaker 5: like always the scummy stuff and like yeah, it's that's
Speaker 5: also why like so many of these companies are like
Speaker 5: based out of Vietnam, out of Iran and whatever. It's
Speaker 5: just companies that already have it hard enough to do
Speaker 5: business globally, where the IT industry is like falling apart
Speaker 5: because there's not enough like local customers and anything that's international.
Speaker 5: You're just the cheap workforce, right, So yeah, it's it's
Speaker 5: once again also like a class problem. I don't like
Speaker 5: most people working in this industry know that they're working
Speaker 5: in a like scummy industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah of course, but like yeah, you got to get
Speaker 2: paid and that's yeah.
Speaker 5: And that's like why I think making it more scary
Speaker 5: to operate in this industry is like yes, the wait
Speaker 5: to go because like with just like these like four
Speaker 5: hacks that have happened against these companies over the last
Speaker 5: like half a year or so, two of them, three
Speaker 5: of them, three of them have shut down completely. Others
Speaker 5: seem to be slowly moving towards just building other software primarily. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's just like, yeah, it's like with any other like
Speaker 5: shady industry that the best we can do is just
Speaker 5: to not make it profitable to run the software, because
Speaker 5: at the very best, anything else we will get it's
Speaker 5: just pushing them more into the shadows, which is not
Speaker 5: going to solve the issue at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think a lot about like strategic thinking, which
Speaker 2: I do believe is kind of often in part because
Speaker 2: of how rightfully negative most people on the left think
Speaker 2: about the military. There's a tendency to ignore some of
Speaker 2: like the theory around how to actually win a conflict
Speaker 2: and all of it all all strategy really, when you're
Speaker 2: talking about like defeating an opponent, revolves around denying and
Speaker 2: taking operational area from them, right, Yeah, And that's what
Speaker 2: you're talking about when you talk about, well we need
Speaker 2: to stop this. You know, one of the first things
Speaker 2: we can do as part of fighting this is to
Speaker 2: stop them from being able to advertise certain places.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's making sure that they're not able to operate without
Speaker 2: being seen. It's basically cutting down their area, their space
Speaker 2: to maneuver, their ability to profit, which cuts down their money,
Speaker 2: their access to people, their ability to actually like operate.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: Like, that's what we're looking at in terms of how
Speaker 2: do you kill this stuff? It's not one single really.
Speaker 2: I use the comparison of like a bullet, but it's
Speaker 2: never going to be one bullet. These things are too durable.
Speaker 2: There's too many countries in the lay to do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's also why I put so much emphasis on
Speaker 5: doing media work about this and getting more people to
Speaker 5: talk about this and getting more awareness of this out there,
Speaker 5: to the point where I'm willing to work with more
Speaker 5: conservative newspapers on this because everyone needs to know about this.
Speaker 5: At the end of the day. This is how we
Speaker 5: like stop people from falling victims to this. Most people
Speaker 5: who are a victim of stocker apps have never heard
Speaker 5: of stocker apps before, and I think that's like one
Speaker 5: of the biggest ways to tackle this. And on the
Speaker 5: other hand, we also have I think another big leverage
Speaker 5: point with how many of these are getting hacked because
Speaker 5: none of these apps are very secure. That's another thing
Speaker 5: is this can also be leveraged against like the abusers
Speaker 5: in this scenario. I think just pointing out to them
Speaker 5: that all of these apps get hacked all the time
Speaker 5: and that this is how they get found out, that
Speaker 5: that this is how their data of them as abusers
Speaker 5: ends up landing on the Internet. I think it's also
Speaker 5: like a very important angle at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: is just to make it clear like yeah, no, not
Speaker 5: even you are like secure from this having consequences for
Speaker 5: your life, like beyond like direct interpersonal or legal consequences.
Speaker 5: This can and in the past has result in like
Speaker 5: your email adders being on a list of people who
Speaker 5: have do abuse to people online. You don't want to
Speaker 5: be on such a list. I think that's also important
Speaker 5: just to like point out there isn't one stockover app
Speaker 5: that's not eventually going to get hacked. There is a
Speaker 5: big war against these apps. They're all like there's so
Speaker 5: many different hacking groups that keep sending me data from
Speaker 5: these like I'm already working on another article that already
Speaker 5: once again affects like the data of like I think
Speaker 5: like eighty thousand more like abusers, and it's just the
Speaker 5: abuser data this time. But I'm still going to report
Speaker 5: on it, like it's it's it's this is not going
Speaker 5: to stop. It's even also not going to stop when
Speaker 5: I stop reporting on this myself, like I've there's been
Speaker 5: work before me down on this. I also the first
Speaker 5: time I got involved in finding stock over was back
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty. People have been hacking these apps forever
Speaker 5: and will keep hacking them, Like just look at the
Speaker 5: Wikipedia page for stock over. There's an ever growing list
Speaker 5: of these apps that have been hacked. And I think
Speaker 5: at this point that like official count being kept by
Speaker 5: one of the people at TechCrunch is at like thirty apps,
Speaker 5: a few of which have been hacked two or three times. Yeah,
Speaker 5: these are not These are not secure apps for any.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, of course not. Yeah, and they yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it makes sense that like an app dedicated
Speaker 2: to violating people's privacy for money would also basically violate
Speaker 2: the privacy of the people using it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and also they don't care. Like I said, of
Speaker 5: course it's a cash grap. It's nothing else. There's a
Speaker 5: few apps that are like a little more than a
Speaker 5: cash crap, but it's usually just because they're made, Like
Speaker 5: there's still a cash grap, but they're like more well made,
Speaker 5: But it's because they're a cash graph from a company
Speaker 5: that has better developers or more money to do the
Speaker 5: initial investment. The thing is also like most of these
Speaker 5: companies don't have a lot of initial investment, And I
Speaker 5: think the important thing to consider as well, here is
Speaker 5: one big area of this that I have not yet
Speaker 5: started tackling, but I do want to like look into
Speaker 5: more sometimes. Is a big reason this industry is and
Speaker 5: most of these apps have a lot of users despite
Speaker 5: there being so many of them, is the affiliate marketing industry.
Speaker 5: Once again, our very beloved friend. Yeah, all of these
Speaker 5: apps are parts of various affiliate marketing networks, some of
Speaker 5: them started by stock Aware company, and some of them
Speaker 5: just other like things to advertise all the shady things
Speaker 5: like all those phone number locator apps or whatever, that's
Speaker 5: also part of those same affiliate marketing networks. And there's
Speaker 5: lots of money flowing here, and there's lots of money
Speaker 5: flowing to very big tech YouTube channels, and I might
Speaker 5: soon have some proof for some of that. But that's
Speaker 5: how these are advertised. It's everyone who advertises stock Aware
Speaker 5: to you, who has a big platform, is doing that
Speaker 5: because they're getting money, not for any other reason.
Speaker 3: We need to do more ads.
Speaker 4: We will be back shortly, and we are back.
Speaker 2: Well that's all I had, Miya, what do you got?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess there's there's another thing I wanted to
Speaker 4: ask a little bit about, which Zach Whitaker, who's been
Speaker 4: one of the journal journalists that tech Crunch doing a
Speaker 4: lot of the research was great. One of the things
Speaker 4: that he brings up that I think is another I
Speaker 4: don't know, it's kind of a plane with fire angle
Speaker 4: on them. But one of the issues that these companies
Speaker 4: seem to have is payment platforms, because a lot of
Speaker 4: payment platforms look at this and go wait, hold.
Speaker 5: On, yeah, so that's yeah.
Speaker 4: We've talked about that a little bit.
Speaker 5: That's an angle. We've also been a fighting on a lot.
Speaker 5: Like me and sign we work on most of these
Speaker 5: stories together. Like it's kind of funny. We both got
Speaker 5: each other into the stockover thing back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: As I mentioned, that was the first time I stumbled
Speaker 5: into a stock cover app with a security issue. I
Speaker 5: reached out to some random journalists that tech Crunch about it,
Speaker 5: and now he is the only one talking about this
Speaker 5: forever because I reached out to him that one time
Speaker 5: and he got sucked into this horrible, horrible world of spying.
Speaker 5: But yeah, like, one of the things we focus on
Speaker 5: a lot is reporting these companies to their payment providers,
Speaker 5: to their server hosters, to the point where sometimes like
Speaker 5: for weeks sack will just wait for them to switch
Speaker 5: to a new provider after we got them taken them
Speaker 5: from like PayPal, and then from their other PayPal account
Speaker 5: where they're just using like the checkout experience from one
Speaker 5: of their completely unrelated software projects which they will later
Speaker 5: claim is not related at all and there are different
Speaker 5: companies and whatever. But then like eventually they get taken
Speaker 5: down from that as well, and usually we can get
Speaker 5: them taken them from most like Western hosters, like especially
Speaker 5: US housters, will immediately take them down. You do not
Speaker 5: want to risk being the company hosting spuywire on US grounds. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's just like same with EU hosters, Like the few
Speaker 5: companies that we've seen that were on Headsnerd, they immediately
Speaker 5: react because it's like yeah, no, like under EULO, you
Speaker 5: don't want to like risk that. And also just because
Speaker 5: you don't want to host that, like there's no reason
Speaker 5: for you to host shit like that. It will have
Speaker 5: like image consequences, and that's an important thing that is
Speaker 5: maybe also something you can do as more like a
Speaker 5: grassroots thing. It's also like if you find one of
Speaker 5: these apps and if you see, oh, they're using like
Speaker 5: PayPal or whatever. Just reach out. I think paper is
Speaker 5: even harder to reach is like just an average lay person.
Speaker 5: I don't expect them to reply. They might still take action,
Speaker 5: you will have to manually check. PayPal doesn't really reply
Speaker 5: to things ever. But yeah, same as like hosting company,
Speaker 5: if it's either hosted on like a European or American
Speaker 5: hosting company, I just just reach out, be like, hey,
Speaker 5: there's someone running spyware on your thing. Also used the
Speaker 5: word spyware, not stocker, where they will not know what
Speaker 5: that is, and it is spyware. So yeah, and that
Speaker 5: can usually get them taken down. And often they don't
Speaker 5: have proper backups and will have a few months of
Speaker 5: data missing, and it's like, yeah, that's how you slowly
Speaker 5: grind them to a halt. Yeah. And also once again
Speaker 5: like if you have tips about any of these companies,
Speaker 5: be it having found a vulnerability just or insider info
Speaker 5: especially I'm always very happy about the insider info. You
Speaker 5: can reach out to either me or Sakudak. We're both
Speaker 5: very happy to talk about this. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's something that's been used really effectively by right
Speaker 4: wingers to target sex workers. It's been a huge thing.
Speaker 4: There's been a bunch of campaigns to get platform companies.
Speaker 4: And yeah, so it's.
Speaker 5: It's interesting that for once we can use the very
Speaker 5: restrictive and conservative rules of payment providers for our good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But yeah, basically any of the big payment providers will
Speaker 5: not respect something like this. Some of the small regional
Speaker 5: odd ones probably won't really give a shit. They have
Speaker 5: no reason to. It's like revenue for them. But yeah,
Speaker 5: it's generally worth trying. And I'm always glad like if
Speaker 5: someone just reaches out to these companies and we don't
Speaker 5: have to do that ourselves. I think me and second,
Speaker 5: a few other people like actively working in this are
Speaker 5: doing more than enough work currently. But yeah, like just
Speaker 5: if you find one of these things that don't go
Speaker 5: digging too deep. It's a depressing world. But if you
Speaker 5: stumble upon one of these somewhere or whatever, just just
Speaker 5: report them. It's it's it's gonna disrupt their operations and
Speaker 5: if it happens often enough, they might just give up. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And I mean, like in cases like the truth Spy,
Speaker 5: they are willing to do extreme amounts of fraud to
Speaker 5: get to money easily because they like started with like
Speaker 5: mostly just in like with the market, they could get
Speaker 5: with their Vietnamese payment providers. Right. Eventually they realized, well,
Speaker 5: the US is like this really big market, right, but
Speaker 5: for really easy like US stuff, we need like a
Speaker 5: PayPal thing, right, So they made like over twelve fake
Speaker 5: American identities with fake passports and fake addresses and sign
Speaker 5: up to pay Paul a whole bunch of times, and
Speaker 5: had various employees that the company move money around. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's obviously not a thing the US government will like
Speaker 5: if you do that. Generally speaking, they moved like millions
Speaker 5: like that, so yeah, which is pretty crazy like that.
Speaker 5: The amount of money that's moving in this industry is crazy.
Speaker 5: Like yeah, actually, like most of these app apps will
Speaker 5: be half broken, which no one ever complains about because
Speaker 5: like it's shady, ye, Like you don't expect like if
Speaker 5: you go online and you search for something shady like
Speaker 5: anything like be it piracy or whatever, you don't expect
Speaker 5: it to be the best experience ever. Like you know,
Speaker 5: you're getting some weird service and it's probably going to
Speaker 5: be half broken. But yeah, like most of these talkob
Speaker 5: apps start at like forty dollars a month and more
Speaker 5: and then some days for more features, you pay like
Speaker 5: up to sixty or seventy or so, and then all
Speaker 5: of these have like tens of thousands of users, sometimes
Speaker 5: hundreds of thousands of users. Yeah, you can do themself.
Speaker 5: It's crazy. This is a really big industry, which makes
Speaker 5: it so crazy to me that it's like not a
Speaker 5: thing that's talked about more, especially in like feminist spaces
Speaker 5: and things like that, because this is such a like
Speaker 5: big angle of like modern tech enabled abuse that they
Speaker 5: really think should should be more of a topic, especially
Speaker 5: on the left, Like this is this is bad?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, this is like critically bad. I agree entirely.
Speaker 5: And also like that the whole thing with like all
Speaker 5: of this data being so easily accept your data can
Speaker 5: end up getting sold on some dark web forum. You're
Speaker 5: both asked the abuse around that's the target, right, and
Speaker 5: the government can find these like I have no like
Speaker 5: this is this is not me making a statement of
Speaker 5: that's a thing that's happening, but there's nothing preventing it
Speaker 5: from hacking these companies and getting like like I sometimes
Speaker 5: like when whenever I get these data sets, and it's
Speaker 5: always hard to work with data sets that include like
Speaker 5: non consent essentially collected data of people, right, Yes, but
Speaker 5: like I do want like do some due diligence checks,
Speaker 5: like mostly trying to find if the government is using
Speaker 5: a specific app. Sometimes yes, there's always like the odd
Speaker 5: correction law of some of the officer who has signed
Speaker 5: up for one or two of these apps or like
Speaker 5: education people and whatever. But then I also some of
Speaker 5: the search through the text message just for just some
Speaker 5: code words and the amount of people moving drugs have
Speaker 5: Stocker were on their phones. It's you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's one of those things where there
Speaker 2: are laws, like technically, if my understanding of the laws
Speaker 2: around this are correct, it is illegal for an organization
Speaker 2: like the FBI to utilize these apps.
Speaker 5: But yes, but we have an organized and called the
Speaker 5: NSA who.
Speaker 2: And it is it is on paper illegal for them
Speaker 2: to do this with a third party app. But one
Speaker 2: thing that often gets done, particularly by the FBI, but
Speaker 2: you know, not just by them, is it's not illegal
Speaker 2: for law enforcement agencies to tracked with private agencies. And
Speaker 2: if those agencies you don't you just don't check in
Speaker 2: on what they're doing, you know, what they're using.
Speaker 5: But like yeah, or like if an inform or like
Speaker 5: if an informant like sends you the data, like you're
Speaker 5: not gonna say.
Speaker 2: No exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: And also you don't really need to disclose that because
Speaker 5: it's information and got froment informant. You do not need
Speaker 5: to disclose that informant in court ever. So yeah, it's
Speaker 5: it's it's there.
Speaker 2: There are there are ways around, you know, the laws
Speaker 2: that we put up, not that we shouldn't continue to
Speaker 2: extend those laws, but you shouldn't like just because well
Speaker 2: they're not allowed to use this doesn't mean they can't
Speaker 2: get access to the info.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, And also there's all this important thing like
Speaker 5: there's more like also globally, like there's other governments that
Speaker 5: can just be using this. Like for one of the
Speaker 5: apps I.
Speaker 2: Got the government, the Russian government doesn't give a ship.
Speaker 5: That was also like another thing where I's like for
Speaker 5: one of the apps I got data for. There was
Speaker 5: some indication that at some point the Colombian National Police
Speaker 5: did a bigger evaluation of using commercials spyware for their use.
Speaker 5: Because you're in the country with not that big of
Speaker 5: a like police budget in comparison, you cannot afford like
Speaker 5: all the Coolestraeli tools everyone else has. So what do
Speaker 5: you do? You just look for random apps you can
Speaker 5: find you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah you find the Walmart, the Kirklin.
Speaker 5: The Wish to the conversion I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah Ali Baba spywear right. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I don't think most of them moved forward with this
Speaker 5: because these apps fucking suck. Like they're bad, Like that's
Speaker 5: that's the other thing, Like they don't even really do
Speaker 5: their jump. Well, they're bad and you don't know who
Speaker 5: is behind them. You cannot even go up to someone
Speaker 5: and be like, yo, don't do this. You also cannot
Speaker 5: go to the cops and be like, this company is
Speaker 5: scamming me, because yeah, I assume some people have probably
Speaker 5: done that before, but it does involve admitting to a crime.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's like, yeah, these companies just get away
Speaker 5: with not giving a shit about their product because like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well I think that's that's all we had.
Speaker 2: Thank you Maya for both the work you're doing and
Speaker 2: for talking to us. Yeah always, is there anything you
Speaker 2: wanted to plug before we roll out here?
Speaker 3: Just my just my.
Speaker 5: Blog, I think where we're like, I do this journalistic
Speaker 5: work and also more, there's about to be another cool
Speaker 5: investigative piece out soon, which tincantually involves more tracking and whatever,
Speaker 5: and also involves like Hollywood and more. It's it's, it's
Speaker 5: it's a crazy big story. I promise that will be
Speaker 5: out like hopefully in a month or so. But yeah,
Speaker 5: my blog at Maya dot CRIMEU dot gay crime, you
Speaker 5: as in crime, w yeah, and k as in gay
Speaker 5: yeah yeah. Just check out my blog at the bottom
Speaker 5: of the blog. There's all my links to my social
Speaker 5: media For anyone who's like listening to this and has
Speaker 5: been wondering where I am. I am back on Twitter
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah for now, for now, that's for for all of
Speaker 2: us these days, that's always like yeah.
Speaker 5: Point, but yeah, I am back on Twitter. I'm I'm
Speaker 5: posting there sometimes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, thank you and thank you all for listening.
Speaker 2: We will be back tomorrow, unless this comes out on
Speaker 2: a Friday, in which case we'll be back at some
Speaker 2: other point, but soon.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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