Stalkerware ban on Android

In her keynote speech at Northsec last year, Eva Galperin, Director of Cybersecurity at Electronic Frontier Foundation, spoke about fixing the stalkerware problem. Stalkerware is monitoring software that is often used to spy or stalk people. It is legal in many countries as it has many legitimate uses but is unfortunately also heavily abused.

Ms. Galperin recently wrote an excellent article about the growing coalition against stalkerware. The fight has many collaborators in the antivirus field already and recently gained a new, powerful ally as Google joins their cause.

Google is formally banning stalkerware from Google Play effective October 1st, 2020. There are a few exceptions but “these apps cannot be used to track a person (a spouse, for example) without their knowledge or permission unless a persistent notification is displayed while the data is being transmitted.”

The biggest abuse of the stalkerware is that it runs covertly in the background so Google’s new initiative should help tremendously.

What about legitimate tracking?

Google built several tracking features into Android:

Lost your phone? Head to your Google Account to get a fairly accurate location.

Want to share your location with your spouse/friends? Maps gives you this functionality.

What about your family? Family Link allows you to keep an eye on your kids.

What do you think?

Tech companies and governments have a blind spot for stalkerware. Why is that? Do you have any experience with stalkerware? Let us know in the comments.