Spy phone software has been thrust into the media spotlight over the last few years, bringing awareness to the critical roles they play in grabbing information that someone would like to hide from you. And while once considered a mythical thing reserved only for the CIA, or FBI, multiple shows, research papers, and news agencies have brought attention to the industry.
But as with most stories that gain attention, sometimes details being reported are either slightly inaccurate, or just blatantly untrue. To advocates in the Monitoring community, it can be frustrating to read and hear about stories that not only are untrue, but are actually harmful, so it’s important to understand what is myth vs reality.
Here are the 4 biggest myths about spy phone software
Myth: You can install Spy Phone Software over the air
Reality: There is no spy phone software that can be installed magically through the air and onto someone elses phone. When installing any spy phone software, you have to accept permissions that pop up on the phone during activation, so you’ll need to have the phone physically in your hand. There are several scams out there though from companies claiming that you can install via bluetooth. This is simply not true.
Myth: Spy phone software can be installed on any iPhone, even one that isn’t jailbroken.
Reality: Our team would love if this was true, but it’s just more misinformation from phony spy apps who are trying to spread this myth so that those less educated about spy software purchase the software. In reality the iPhone—or any other iOS device—must be jailbroken first before installing any type of software that is not directly available in the app store.
Myth: it’s really hard to install spy phone software
Reality: You don’t have to be some coding master to use spy phone software correctly. On average it will take anyone less than 5-10 minutes to install and activate a spy app onto a phone. But just to make sure you know what you’re doing, we recommend that you install and activate onto your primary phone first, before trying to install it on the phone you actually want to monitor.
Myth: spy phone software is a trojan
Reality: While there’s a possibility of some NSA-level spy app lurking out there, probably pre-installed on the world’s entire phone supply, there is certainly not a consumer level spy app that could be classified as a trojan. That didn’t stop a certain anti-virus companies from trying to label us as one though, and you can read our response to the incident here
Conclusion
Hopefully this article has helped to clear a few spy phone software misconceptions that exist. The ones we wrote about in this post probably aren’t the only myths that exist though. If there’s a myth that you discovered then let us know in the comments section below, we’ll be happy to add it to our post!