'Stalking' phone app causes alarm

[homasse]

'Stalking' phone app causes alarm / Software can show a phone's geographic location, reveal owner's movements

Spy software that can be installed in a smartphone to monitor the activities of the phone's user has sparked controversy and drawn complaints to the company that makes it.

The "Karelog" downloadable software application, released on Aug.

Comments

[layweed]

Idk what the big deal is about smartphones. Tbh, I still find them overrated and would be perfectly happy with a candybar phone.

[shorofsky]

Smartphones are WAY overrated. I have an HTC Desire and I find it to be too large and not user friendly enough. I'm old skool with texts and like to feel buttons when texting so the touch screen irritates me. I'm not getting on board with all this app business anyway, I find it takes too much time away from my life to be checking this, that and the other constantly on the phone.

[sillysallyfckup]

Ditto about the buttons--I had to switch to a touch screen phone when our family changed carriers and the way it operates actually really bothers me... Not to mention the ablity to check everything turns into a compulsion to check everything, so I usually just leave my phone at home.

[mindrtist]

I felt the same until I got one with a slide-out keyboard. It's QWERTY, so I thought I'd love it . Yet the numbers and punctuation marks are in weird places and you have to press a "control" button of sorts to change it into number or punctuation mark mode. So, the problem for me ends up that it's kind of hard to see the small buttons and what extra steps I have to take to get upper-lowercase words out without too much effort. Unless I'm in broad daylight and the phone is at the perfect distance for me to be able to see what's going on.

[anolinde]

Legal experts' opinions are divided over whether it is illegal to install such tracking apps without the consent of smartphone owners.

Um... Why wouldn't this be illegal???

[emmaraikou]

Wouldn't this qualify as hacking?

[sesmo]

Because you have legal access usually to your spouse's/SOs phone?

[seasight]

Do you? Huh. I wouldn't have assumed that.

[hinoema]

So, why not get a smartphone minus the 'phone', and get VoIP?

[sesmo]

Because that requires network to work, and not all of us live in a wifi-available environment?

[avashida]

I think this could be abused so easily...On the other hand, this is the kind of thing my dad would probably like to put on my younger sister's phone. Last year she got into all kinds of drunken trouble (she's thirteen) and I would approve this going on her phone just so we knew where she was when she was out.

[windy_lea]

Discussing whether using a thing like this might be appropriate for a minor who has shown themselves to be extremely irresponsible is one thing, but as you noted this app has way way too much potential for abuse--against minors, or more legally speaking, against adults. If it's name is "boyfriend log", it's clearly meant to infringe on the rights of adults, though. :-/

[seasontoseason]

it's just CREEPY that they equate "boyfriend" with "controlling stalker". EUGH.

[windy_lea]

Yeah, I'm really bothered by the fact the developers even thought it would be okay to market it to boyfriends as a device for tracking your lover. I get it, no one wants to get cheated on. But hey, guess what, people are not entitled to know where their S.O. is at the touch of the button. If they want to know where S.O. has been, they can find out the old fashioned way, and hopefully that will assure they'll only go to such lengths because of, y'know, genuinely suspicious behavior.

[windy_lea]

Ugh Ugh Ugh Ugh WTF. No. Is there an anti-stalking-app app? Because there should be.