Many Believe That Using Spyware to Snoop on Family Members Is Legal

Megalith

Megalith

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Would you snoop on your significant other or children using spyware? A decent amount of people would, or, at the very least, believe it’d be perfectly legal to do so. Out of a survey of more than 2,000 people, one in five respondents would not hesitate to install spy apps on someone’s device, which may be used to listen in on conversations and read their messages.

The survey of more than 2,000 people–spread roughly equally between age groups, genders, and UK and US nationality–questioned respondents about how they viewed spying on partners’ and children’s phones and internet activity. We found the answers to this question somewhat troubling. About one in five respondents thought it was not illegal to install a spying program on a partner’s phone to snoop on their activity. Over one-quarter of those questioned weren’t sure. As a general rule, it is illegal to install an app on another person’s phone without their knowledge. Whether doing so actually is illegal depends on the circumstances.
 
Not really spyware but... yes for sure. All our phones have SMS Backup & Restore on it. This cost my teenager both front/back cameras being physically removed from the phone.

I hate snooping, but I think a special case exists for children. Not tolerated on adults though. My Wife and I have complete access to each other's everything out of convenience. Still, we never access without asking. If you can't trust then you shouldn't be married / in that relationship. I hate it when I hear of boyfriend's / girlfriend's going through the other's personal stuff.

Edit: Ignoring legalities.
 
Megalith said:
Would you snoop on your significant other or children using spyware? A decent amount of people would, or, at the very least, believe it’d be perfectly legal to do so. Out of a survey of more than 2,000 people, one in five respondents would not hesitate to install spy apps on someone’s device, which may be used to listen in on conversations and read their messages.

The survey of more than 2,000 people–spread roughly equally between age groups, genders, and UK and US nationality–questioned respondents about how they viewed spying on partners’ and children’s phones and internet activity. We found the answers to this question somewhat troubling. About one in five respondents thought it was not illegal to install a spying program on a partner’s phone to snoop on their activity. Over one-quarter of those questioned weren’t sure. As a general rule, it is illegal to install an app on another person’s phone without their knowledge. Whether doing so actually is illegal depends on the circumstances.
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Well it is not illegal to install these apps on another's phone if you are the person who actually paid for it? Like buying one for your kids or wife.
 
vegeta535 said:
Well it is not illegal to install these apps on another's phone if you are the person who actually paid for it? Like buying one for your kids or wife.
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Kids is not; but if you bought it for a friend then yey be a bastard ;).
 
Kind of gray area.

If you are paying for it does it give you rights similar to employer / employee ?

After all your responsible for the phone as well.

Kids? I am in favor of.

Someone else's phone. No way
 
I think it's ok for a person you're responsible of... ie children or in the case of adults, an employee. But you should never be allowed to install such on a girlf/boyfriend device even if it's yours. Spying on someone has to be illegal at some point...

EDIT: Even for employee, you shouldn't be allowed to read personal stuff unless a court order is obtained... I mean checking the GPS while working hours... meh ok.. checking the GPS on a Friday evening to see what club the employee is at... big no no.
 
Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's morally correct also. I could site all kinds of things that are legal but morally reprehensible. The point of the matter is don't be a dick.

Is it too hard to treat people with respect and decency?
 
I would amend that you should hire someone else it spy on someone if you have that much of a problem.
 
viscountalpha said:
I would amend that you should hire someone else it spy on someone if you have that much of a problem.
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Depending on whom that someone is, isn't that harassment ? I have a hard time with that... although I can understand why someone would resort to that..
 
I only install it on the wifes, girlfriend and the bosses. Sometimes there're one and the same.
 
Given that as a legal guardian of a minor, you are legally responsible for their actions or damage they cause. I would feel 100% justified in installing such software on a minor who is under my guardianship's digital devices. Not only do you need to protect them, you also need to protect yourself. This can catch and stop adults who shouldn't have illicit contact with them quickly as well.

Doing it to your husband or wife without their consent as adults whom you have no legal requirements over is far more murky, but I know private eyes have been hired to catch them doing things for many decades so I am not so sure that there isn't enough legal president to get away with it. Even if it isn't moral.
 
It's worth keeping in mind the law changes based on jurisdiction. Not just State/province but nation too.
 
2000 people is a small sample size for nearly half a billion folks. Also people are stupid generally. Spying on people is not nice either, so probably illegal...
 
This is for the US market and IAMNAL, but do deal with this a lot in the employment area a lot.

Minors 100% legal(and I do it to mine), Employees 100% legal on a corporate owned device or if they connect to the employers network(depends on the employee/situation), Spouse is a major grey area and sometimes depends on state law.
 
Maxime Mitchell said:
Depending on whom that someone is, isn't that harassment ? I have a hard time with that... although I can understand why someone would resort to that..
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Cheating wife / girlfriend or some other circumstance when you can sense something wrong but can't prove it.

But I'm all for people being honest with their partners and not doing shitty stuff like that. People do stupid shit though.
 
I worked in corporate IT for a very long time. IF i issue you a computer, i am god on it. I can and will see everything on it, if needed. If you dont want me to be your admin, source your hardware elsewhere, but its not going to be allowed on my network.3

TL:DR - you can 'spy' on anyone who has hardware you are the admin for.
 
Spire3660 said:
I worked in corporate IT for a very long time. IF i issue you a computer, i am god on it. I can and will see everything on it, if needed. If you dont want me to be your admin, source your hardware elsewhere, but its not going to be allowed on my network.3

TL:DR - you can 'spy' on anyone who has hardware you are the admin for.
Click to expand...
VRT said:
This is for the US market and IAMNAL, but do deal with this a lot in the employment area a lot.

Minors 100% legal(and I do it to mine), Employees 100% legal on a corporate owned device or if they connect to the employers network(depends on the employee/situation), Spouse is a major grey area and sometimes depends on state law.
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So how do corporations have more legal rights than human beings?
 
HeadRusch said:
And the Big-Brother Socialist Dream tries to take another step forward..."It's not only accepted, it's *expected* comrade". Shit, I feel like an entire generation needs to watch Rambo II and Threads or something.....
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Nobody should watch that POS. OTOH, First Blood is awesome. As far as this being a socialist thing, Puhleeze. Nixon was into that shit. So was J. edgar Hoover (though I don't know if he was a D or R) and W too. It's not a socialist thing, it's an authoritarian thing. And Left and Right can be authoritarians (though in this country the Right tends to be more authoritarian...but that could change given how much the kids on the left want to censor speech they object to. Then again, those on the right are pissed about Colbert's joke (which AFAICT was bleeped and his mouth blurred...plus it was not in prime time).
 
Nytegard said:
So how do corporations have more legal rights than human beings?
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They don't make those million dollar contributions to Super PACs out of the altruistic goodness in their corporate hearts.

As far as legalities, to really cover themselves, Employers need to have put in place policies and procedures on computer security and the amount of monitoring the employees are subject to. And make sure the employees have signed paperwork that they have read and understood the P&P manuals and attended the training classes.
 
Hi All

On your Spouse or significant other, in my opinion is a No No. If you can't trust them, what's the point of being with them. For your Children, again my opinion, long as they've shown to be responsible then no.
 
If the phone is on my account its perfectly within my discretion to do so. Now someone's phone not on my account would be a big no-no.
 
Children? They simply should have to expectation to communication privacy of any kind. Not in person, not on the phone, not on text, not on the internet. You may ALLOW them privacy, but they should never have legal protection thereof. That undermines the very principles of being a parent.

The moment your child finds out that they can surf porn all day and you legally can't go looking to find out how the hell does that work? A parent should not only have the right to install spyware on their child's devices, but to pry the computer or phone out of their child's hands and search it any dang time they please.
 
So, legality aside....Kids? If necessary yes I will keep tabs on them for sure. My kids right now are young so you bet I am all up in their shit but it's limited to monitoring the stuff they watch, they have no access to social media or anything yet.

Significant other? No way. We've been together long enough to bridge the pre-email/text/social media era, back when some people had physical diaries. She had one and wrote in it a lot, and I never touched it. Had zero interest in prying into her privacy. These days, I know all her passwords and phone PIN, but it's the same deal. I never look into her shit ever.

She can be curious about me, on occasion. I don't mind. She has once in a while explored her curiosity in my stuff, peeking at my emails or texts or whatever. Which is fine and normal but never anything invasive. It's almost flattering, lol. Me, I just have no interest in spying. Not a road I want to even start to go down. I'm too lazy, for one...and if it came down to it, I know her so well that I wouldn't need to do any of that to figure out something was up, if it came to that.

If I start spying, the trust is gone at that point and it's just for building a better divorce case....
 
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Thankfully believing something doesn't make it so. Otherwise the world would be pretty chaotic.
 
Here is a question for everyone...

We use a MDM solution for all of our mobile devices and do centralized logging for everything at my company. I include both my personal cell phone and my corporate cell phone in our MDM solution also the same information that is logged for everyone else is logged for myself.

Who else that own's/runs a company does this, or would you do it?

The above being said, there are only two people that have access to the logging system, myself and my right hand person. If they ever look at my logs they better have a damn good reason and let me know right when they do it!
 
VRT said:
Here is a question for everyone...

We use a MDM solution for all of our mobile devices and do centralized logging for everything at my company. I include both my personal cell phone and my corporate cell phone in our MDM solution also the same information that is logged for everyone else is logged for myself.

Who else that own's/runs a company does this, or would you do it?

The above being said, there are only two people that have access to the logging system, myself and my right hand person. If they ever look at my logs they better have a damn good reason and let me know right when they do it!
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Funny you mention your logs and nothing about your customers'. You are your own customer, drink your own kool-aid. Bravo if you already do.
 
Spire3660 said:
I worked in corporate IT for a very long time. IF i issue you a computer, i am god on it. I can and will see everything on it, if needed. If you dont want me to be your admin, source your hardware elsewhere, but its not going to be allowed on my network.3

TL:DR - you can 'spy' on anyone who has hardware you are the admin for.
Click to expand...

and if by chance I found out you were abusing your "god like" powers I would be compelled to sue you into non-existence
 
dandirk said:
Funny you mention your logs and nothing about your customers'. You are your own customer, drink your own kool-aid. Bravo if you already do.
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All of our changes etc are logged through the same systems that can be and my systems are logged just as an employee.

Most of our customers are different on what we can, what we need to log etc. Financial, gaming & DoD are all different than our standard customer.
 
VRT said:
This is for the US market and IAMNAL, but do deal with this a lot in the employment area a lot.

Minors 100% legal(and I do it to mine), Employees 100% legal on a corporate owned device or if they connect to the employers network(depends on the employee/situation), Spouse is a major grey area and sometimes depends on state law.
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On corporate owned devices this is 100% true -- and on employee owned devices that connect to the corporate network, it can be a very interesting issue.

Case in point, if you connect to a corporate Exchange server from your cellphone, the first time you connected to the account, did you read the fine print of the agreement that you clicked "yes" to?
Typically, you just agreed to them being able to monitor almost anything on your phone and in some case you also just gave them the right and the ability to do a remote wipe of the data on your phone in the event you are terminated, etc.
 
I would say monitoring the use of a personal device owned by the employee that they may occasionally use for work is crossing the line, particularly when the full extent of your power is unknown to them as we all know no one ever reads the fine print. Monitoring just the work done, or the application or folder used for work or whatever, OK. But maintaining full control over it or the ability to wipe it 100% just because they used it once or for a limited time or whatever, that's too much.

It's a shit choice for the employee too as many times they may think they're going to be seen in a negative light if they don't go the extra mile and check that one important email on their personal phone or whatever. Or if some big project is going to require working from home over the weekend but you're going to be the one guy saying "well I would but I don't agree to your IT equipment policy, sorry everyone." Legality aside--and its murky there--it's not fair.
 
illram said:
I would say monitoring the use of a personal device owned by the employee that they may occasionally use for work is crossing the line, particularly when the full extent of your power is unknown to them as we all know no one ever reads the fine print. Monitoring just the work done, or the application or folder used for work or whatever, OK. But maintaining full control over it or the ability to wipe it 100% just because they used it once or for a limited time or whatever, that's too much.

It's a shit choice for the employee too as many times they may think they're going to be seen in a negative light if they don't go the extra mile and check that one important email on their personal phone or whatever. Or if some big project is going to require working from home over the weekend but you're going to be the one guy saying "well I would but I don't agree to your IT equipment policy, sorry everyone." Legality aside--and its murky there--it's not fair.
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With us if you insist on BYOD connect to our exchange, our network etc you are going to have to load what is called a MDM which will allow us full control of that device. We have had people take their device and try to download sensitive information and then resign. The client asked for us to wipe the device which is within their right legally and retain the IP of the corporation. Just look at this Uber fiasco that is going on right now.
 
VRT said:
With us if you insist on BYOD connect to our exchange, our network etc you are going to have to load what is called a MDM which will allow us full control of that device. We have had people take their device and try to download sensitive information and then resign. The client asked for us to wipe the device which is within their right legally and retain the IP of the corporation. Just look at this Uber fiasco that is going on right now.
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Very true. Which is why I refuse to connect my own personal devices to anything that requires installing MDM -- I always use POP3/IMAP (if enabled) and OWA when not.

Of course, I also keep all my phones rooted, highly customized, and locked down more than most people do -- with firewall rules that block just about everything (of course, most people don't use SSH and VI when configuring their cell phones, and most people aren't in the business of writing custom Linux kernel mods and drivers or porting boot loaders to new platforms either). The kernel on most of my phones is my own custom version with several modifications.

During testing on one of my secondary, older Android phones, it has been interesting to note that quite a few of the MDM and Exchange type clients detect root and refuse to install if you are rooted.
However, I have tested another app on the phone that essentially blocks their root checking and lets them think the phone isn't rooted, though a couple still detected this and refused to proceed.
That said, a custom kernel and application with direct hooks into the kernel (custom) that watches for specific processes, hides root status from them, and then essentially virtualizes most of their file I/O to a small (fake) root filesystem in another flash partition should allow circumventign even this type of program, while still allowing them to think they have control.

I do IT support and security setups for several companies, so this was essentially just for my own testing to see if it was possible and to verify what I recommend to my clients -- don't let your employees use their own BYOD devices if the data they will be accessing is confidential or sensitive, instead provide a device for them that you already have locked down and setup properly before you give it to them. If they own the device, know what they are doing, and set it up properly themselves ahead of time, there is essentially no way for you to 100% prevent them from archiving the data on that device in a manner such that you cannot wipe it.
 
Advil said:
Children? They simply should have to expectation to communication privacy of any kind. Not in person, not on the phone, not on text, not on the internet. You may ALLOW them privacy, but they should never have legal protection thereof. That undermines the very principles of being a parent.

The moment your child finds out that they can surf porn all day and you legally can't go looking to find out how the hell does that work? A parent should not only have the right to install spyware on their child's devices, but to pry the computer or phone out of their child's hands and search it any dang time they please.
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I completely agree. If the parent in say Europe is responsible if the child downloads DRM stuff then the parent should be allowed to spy on his kids to ensure the kids aren't breaking laws.
 
If you can't trust your kids with a phone unless you are spying on them. Don't buy them a phone they aren't ready for the responsibility >.<

Spying on your kids is disgusting. Telling your 10 11 and 12 year olds they will have to wait until they are 13-14-15 what ever suits them to have such a device is called parenting.
 
If you are using spyware to snoop on family members, I'd say the issue is no longer a legal issue, but family trust issues. Less so for kids, since there are legitimate reasons for wanting to track your young ones, though I wouldn't do it via spyware, but if you are snooping on SO, that usually means trust has completely broken down, and you may as well divorce on the spot.
 
JosiahBradley said:
2000 people is a small sample size for nearly half a billion folks. Also people are stupid generally. Spying on people is not nice either, so probably illegal...
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If you think that a sample size needs to be bigger the more people you have to get an accurate estimation of their beliefs...you might want to take a statistics class. But my guess is won't matter anyways because when math doesn't align with what you believe then 1000's of PhD's and 1000 of years of math are wrong because "you know better".
 
Trepidati0n said:
If you think that a sample size needs to be bigger the more people you have to get an accurate estimation of their beliefs...you might want to take a statistics class. But my guess is won't matter anyways because when math doesn't align with what you believe then 1000's of PhD's and 1000 of years of math are wrong because "you know better".
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I have a degree in Mathematics and yes 2000 is extremely small for the populace of a diverse country, but whatever that's your opinion man.
 
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