Dark Purpose Apps: Are These a Big New Thing?
June 23, 2018
Very few apps are made with the intent to cause harm to others, but that doesn’t stop criminals from using good apps for bad purposes. What seemed to have started with stories of people having their homes robbed after posting vacation photos on Facebook has taken a darker turn, as we discovered in a recent New York Times piece, “Hundreds of Apps Can Empower Stalkers to Track Their Victims.”
According to the story:
“More than 200 apps and services offer would-be stalkers a variety of capabilities, from basic location tracking to harvesting texts and even secretly recording video, according to a new academic study. More than two dozen services were promoted as surveillance tools for spying on romantic partners, according to the researchers and reporting by The New York Times.”
Oddly, these apps are also being used by many dark web deviants who are suffering under increased government and law enforcement crackdowns of their domains. Several dark web criminals have switched to very public apps to evade police, much like a bank robber escaping into a crowd to lose the cops. Look for more stories like this in the future as criminals find more ways to exploit the tools and apps we all use everyday.
Patrick Roland, June 23, 2018
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