Retina-X Studios, LLC, the creators of the first spy software for the iPhone, announced today the immediate availability of Mobile Spy for Apple iPhone 4 devices. No other professional monitoring software is currently compatible with iPhone iOS 4. Users can silently track GPS locations, SMS messages, photos and calls of children or employees inside a secure online control panel.
Mobile Spy runs in total stealth mode and no mentions of the program are shown on the iPhone. The software runs in the background behind all other applications. After the software is set up on the phone, it silently records the entire text of all SMS text messages, information about each call, emails, photos snapped, web visits, contacts list and actual GPS positions.
Immediately after activities are logged, they are silently uploaded to the user’s secure online account. Accounts can be securely checked online from any web browser without needing further access to the phone. Activity logs are viewable in real time immediately after they are recorded, including complete texts and maps of GPS positions.
This exclusive system helps businesses enforce their Acceptable Use and Vehicle Policies on company-provided phones. The software can also monitor teen or family phones. It gives a parent the ability to remotely monitor their child’s texting activities. As described on CNN, police also use the software to catch child predators. Another common use is to back up a user’s own cell activity as a record of all important text conversations and travels.
A one-year subscription to Mobile Spy is priced at US$99.97. More info here.
Source: Retina-X Studios, LLC
Invaluable if you need a finger on the pulse
It seems strange to me that Apple allow this app. It sounds like the kind of spyware we would want to keep off our computer systems…
Surely this is an infringement of civil rights, At least in Europe?
My children – yes. My employees – no.
What civil rights does a child have that prohibits a parent from monitoring their activity?
This screams of privacy infringements and civil rights issues. Lawyers will have a field day with this one. Monitoring your kids is one thing but anyone else, that can turn out to be a huge legal headache. Also, in the PC world, I think this type of app is called a virus
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This software is disgusting. Using this makes you a bad parent. If you are an employer and use this software then you might as well just fire everyone and hire new people you can trust. This software will bring no good to those that use it.
Only works on jailbroken iPhones.
Just looked around on their site. They do require an iPhone to be jail broken before use.
That app should be named “Stasi” like in Staatssicherheitsdienst. Terrible!
johnny:
Buy your own phone then…
I suspect that monitoring of devices provided to employees by a company is allowed, as long as the potential for monitoring has been disclosed and acknowledged by the employees. But I am not a lawyer (by choice), so that is just educated speculation based on previous articles that I have read on the subject.
“Also, in the PC world, I think this type of app is called a virus”
That’s funny, to your IT department it’s called ‘what we run on every single machine’.
OK, so you have to disable the phone’s security via jailbreaking to install this surveillance software, leaving the phone in an insecure state. And that makes sense to anyone?
In an office environment, this kind of monitoring is easier to accept. Managers need some way to know if Joe Blow on the 3rd floor is spending half his morning downloading porn and reading MDN.
Seems wrong on a mobile phone device that realistically will be used for personal use during non-working hours. Employers using this are showing bad faith with their employees.
Take this to the next step and implant a GPS device with long life battery in each child.
If you’re a ‘responsible’ parent, what choice do you have?
Seriously, how far away is this?
Pure hit-bait story.
Who gives a rat’s ass? There are tons of apps for Jail-broken phones out there that do all kinds of things.
No. Being a bad parent makes you a bad parent.
It would shock me if Apple allowed something like this on the App store. It’s spyware!
Why is this press release for jailbreak only software news? With only a link on how to buy, this looks like an advertisement than something fellow MDN watchers would care about….or has MDM been hacked?
from the website:
*** Your iPhone MUST be jailbroken prior to installing Mobile Spy. You cannot download or install Mobile Spy if the iPhone is not jailbroken. We DO NOT PROVIDE SUPPORT for the jailbreaking process. This must be done by the customer. You can search online for numerous sites with tutorials that can assist you with this process, such as iClarified or Redmond Pie. ***
Crazy man!
If you are a parent you own the phone and can put what software you like on it. If you are an employer you own the phone and can put what software you like on it. No civil liberties are being harmed. If you don’t like the terms of your companies (or parents) acceptable use you have a VERY simple remedy, BUY YOUR OWN PHONE!
I would like to see Apple actually embrace this in the App store. It’s not on my phone, but it would be on my employees phones, if that was in the budget.
And until you have your own children (and even if you do) this is not bad parenting, it’s called being careful. We all know your children are Rhodes scholars and virgins until marriage but that data represents an outlier, not the norm. Children make mistakes we are suppose to help them nit make the mistakes to be life changing.
As a parent of teenage boys, I struggle to think about how bad my relationship with them would have to be to put something like this on their phones. If I have to result to this type of control, then I have failed as a parent and my child would not have a phone.
How do we expect our children to become trust worthy if we don’t give them some level of trust? These are the people that will someday run our country, have some decisions in our future or have some baring on life decisions.
Prison is not the type of place I want to raise my children and it’s definately not the way I would run my business.
“In an office environment, this kind of monitoring is easier to accept. Managers need some way to know if Joe Blow on the 3rd floor is spending half his morning downloading porn and reading MDN.”
How about whether or not Joe Blow delivers the results he was hired to deliver? Who cares what he does at any given hour of the day if he delivers his assigned deliverables on time? It’s called managing your employees.
I didn’t really finish and want to clearify.
If my children, at some point gave me reason to not trust them or our relationship got to that point, software to track their every move or conversation, would not be necessary.