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