#WeekendWisdom 089 Spyware

Welcome to #WeekendWisdom number 89. This week we’re going to talk about spyware.

Where is this story coming from?

Now that indoor dining has reopened here in Ireland I’m able to get back out and start socialising in a normal environment again, thanks be to God. During the week I caught up with some old and dear friends.

We were having a chat and one of them mentioned that his sister had recently got out of a very fractious relationship with her previous long-term partner. It had gotten really nasty towards the end and it turns out that her partner had installed spyware on her phone. I was asked, being the nerd in the group, what’s this spyware stuff all about.

What is Spyware?

Spyware is really nasty and insidious software that can be installed on a phone very covertly. It’s very hard to detect that it’s on there or even realise that it’s in use. You could possibly detect it by there’s probably a greater drain on the battery on the phone. You need to charge more often.

But this stuff is spying on everything you do. It will record every message that is sent and received. It will record any phone call sent and received. Probably including the audio. It would track all the location, any photos taken, any video shot. Everything will be recorded and given back to that person who controls the spyware.

What can you do if you think you are infected with it?

So it’s really nasty and insidious stuff. If you suspect you might have it on your phone or any device just do a factory reset on the device. Put it back to scratch and put on good security again on it. A new PIN or other means of securing your phone.

Don’t ever use spyware yourself, it could possibly be illegal.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.