US spyware and adware vendor pcTattletale has shut down its operations following a critical knowledge breach that uncovered delicate details about its prospects, in addition to knowledge stolen from a few of their victims.
pcTattletale was promoted as “worker and baby monitoring software program” designed to “defend your small business and household.” In fact, what it really was, was a solution to surreptitiously spy upon different individuals’s telephones and computer systems – secretly viewing every little thing they did.
The software program bragged about being “100% Undetectable,” which ends up in an attention-grabbing query. Why would pcTattletale should be undetectable if it had been used to watch workers or youngsters? Certainly a father or mother or employer would solely use the software program with the permission and information of their baby or employee?
In fact, the reason being that stalkerware like pcTattletale can be used for monitoring the situation and actions of individuals with out their information, remotely viewing screenshots and personal info from anyplace on the planet. It is simple to think about that a lot of these spied upon with out consent might be spouses and home companions.
Common readers of Sizzling for Safety will know that it is commonplace for stalkerware corporations to undergo from weak safety, spilling their databases of details about their prospects in addition to the victims who’re spied upon. Final August, as an example, we reported on how the LetMeSpy stalkerware (on reflection, the clue was within the app’s identify) had been hacked and went out of enterprise.
The most recent casualty amongst the creepy spouseware distributors is pcTattletale. A number of days in the past, we reported on how the web site of pcTattletale had been defaced, and its database and supply code leaked.
The primary clue for many prospects of pcTattletale was in all probability that the stalkerware’s homepage was altered.
As a substitute of the traditional pcTattletale web site trumpeting the skills of its “worker and baby monitoring” software program…
…the location was defaced with a message from a hacker, linking to tens of gigabytes price of information claiming to include the corporate’s databases.
The leaked knowledge included particulars of 138,751 buyer accounts, together with gadget info, e-mail addresses, IP addresses, names, passwords, cellphone numbers, bodily addresses, SMS messages, and usernames.
The pcTattletale web site is now offline, and in a quick assertion to TechCrunch, app founder Bryan Fleming stated his firm was “out of enterprise and fully accomplished.”
Whatever the ethics of a stalkerware operation, there are clearly some classes right here that each one companies must study concerning the significance of correct cybersecurity, particularly when dealing with such delicate info.
However greater than that, the broader public wants to grasp that utilizing stalkerware to spy on others with out their permission isn’t acceptable. And in the event you do determine to digitally stalk any individual with an app like pcTattletale, you run the chance of your creepy behaviour turning into public information when the service suffers a safety breach.
If you wish to study extra concerning the stalkerware menace, or are involved that somebody is perhaps utilizing spyware and adware in opposition to you, I’d suggest visiting the web site of the Coalition Towards Stalkerware.
