Tackling tech abuse: protecting people from ‘stalkerware’ and cyberfraud

Tech­nol­o­gy is a pow­er­ful tool and the online world served as a real life­line for many in the pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, it also pro­vides some peo­ple with a new way to stalk, iso­late and con­trol women, as well as tar­get and take advan­tage of some of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in soci­ety.

Research by Avast, a glob­al provider of dig­i­tal secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy prod­ucts, revealed a huge increase in the use of stalk­er­ware and spy­ware apps in the UK since lock­down mea­sures were first intro­duced. The vol­ume of stalk­er­ware and spy­ware apps in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary of this year increased 93% on the same peri­od in 2020 before Covid restric­tions came into force.

“Depend­ing on which coun­try you look at, some­times it’s a 300% rise, some­times it’s a 100% rise,” says Jaya Baloo, chief infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty offi­cer at Avast. “It’s a dra­mat­ic dif­fer­ence from the year before, and we think it’s been brought about by the pan­dem­ic.” 
Alarm­ing­ly, the growth in stalk­er­ware seems to echo the increase in domes­tic abuse cas­es across the UK since lock­down mea­sures came into force. Refuge, which pro­vides spe­cial­ist sup­port for women and chil­dren expe­ri­enc­ing domes­tic abuse, report­ed that between April 2020 and Feb­ru­ary 2021 calls and con­tacts logged on Refuge’s Nation­al Domes­tic Abuse Helpline (NDAH) were up by an aver­age of 61%.

Stalk­er­ware apps give abusers anoth­er way to exert con­trol over their vic­tims. Often adver­tised for mon­i­tor­ing chil­dren, employ­ees or loved ones, they are gen­er­al­ly installed on the vic­tim’s phone by jeal­ous spous­es, abu­sive ex-part­ners, or so-called friends. The per­pe­tra­tor can poten­tial­ly gain access to a victim’s pho­tos, videos, emails, texts and What­sApp and Face­book mes­sages, as well as eaves­drop on phone calls and make covert record­ings of online con­ver­sa­tions. 

“These apps act as a trust­ed par­ty on the device, like any app that would have full per­mis­sion, and there­fore they can do mul­ti­ple things,” says Baloo. “So it’s not just about track­ing the vic­tim’s phys­i­cal loca­tion.” Once installed on the vic­tim’s device, stalk­er­ware is also incred­i­bly hard to detect. “You don’t receive any alerts. It’s sur­rep­ti­tious­ly run­ning in the back­ground, so it requires some sig­nif­i­cant skills [to dis­cov­er and remove].”

As well as part­ner­ing with Refuge to sup­port its Tech Abuse sup­port line, the com­pa­ny is also a mem­ber of the Coali­tion Against Stalk­er­ware, a cross-indus­try organ­i­sa­tion com­mit­ted to rais­ing pub­lic aware­ness about the issue. Avast con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tors and reports stalk­er­ware apps. For exam­ple in 2019, Avast mobile threat researchers iden­ti­fied and worked to remove sev­er­al stalk­er­ware apps from the Google Play Store.

“We want to be on both sides of the time­line, mak­ing sure that appro­pri­ate pro­tec­tions are employed before there’s ever a vic­tim, try­ing to get rid of the com­pa­nies that make this [stalk­er­ware] pos­si­ble in the first place, and edu­cat­ing vic­tims about what you can do to make sure you don’t get revic­timised,” says Baloo.

Protecting the most vulnerable in society

As well as the growth of tech abuse with­in rela­tion­ships, cyber­crim­i­nals are also active­ly tar­get­ing the more vul­ner­a­ble in soci­ety. Romance fraud, gov­ern­ment and bank imper­son­ation schemes and tech sup­port scams all aim to exploit a group that are online more than ever before, but which some­times lack the knowl­edge, skills and con­fi­dence of younger gen­er­a­tions or those who are more dig­i­tal­ly savvy.

To tack­le the issue, Avast teamed up with Neigh­bour­hood Watch to cre­ate a joint Cyber­hood Watch ini­tia­tive. Togeth­er, it helps mem­bers and vol­un­teers learn more about the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty risks that exist online, and pro­vides clear, sim­ple tips on the steps they can take to pro­tect them­selves.

Research by Avast and Neigh­bour­hood Watch found that over a third of Neigh­bour­hood Watch mem­bers are now more con­cerned about cyber­crime than phys­i­cal crime. “We knew there was a con­cern, but we were quite sur­prised at the lev­el of it,” says John Hay­ward-Cripps, CEO of the Neigh­bour­hood Watch.

Accord­ing to a sur­vey of 28,000 Neigh­bour­hood Watch mem­bers, 18% have been vic­tims of cyber­crime in the past year, while 33% know some­one else who has. In terms of finan­cial impact, over a third of vic­tims (36%) lost mon­ey and of them, 23% lost more than £1000. A fur­ther 39% of the 28,000 mem­bers polled had expe­ri­enced an increase in the num­ber of tar­get­ed phish­ing attempts. The major­i­ty of these crimes were kept secret by the vic­tims, with only 27% report­ing the inci­dent to the police.

This seems to indi­cate a gen­er­al lack of con­fi­dence in talk­ing about cyber­crime expe­ri­ences with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, as well as a gap in under­stand­ing the best meth­ods for pro­tect­ing your­self online. “None of us want to admit we’ve been daft, even though the real­i­ty is that scam­mers are real­ly good at what they do,” says Hay­ward-Cripps. “If it was­n’t suc­cess­ful, they would­n’t do it.”

One of the unique fea­tures of the Cyber­hood Watch ini­tia­tive is its net­work of com­mu­ni­ty ambas­sadors, who help to ini­ti­ate con­ver­sa­tions about cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. “These are ordi­nary peo­ple that have been trained to act as a kind of hub, talk­ing about these issues to local groups or answer­ing ques­tions that peo­ple have got local­ly,” says Hay­ward-Cripps.

Exam­ples of what peo­ple can do to pro­tect them­selves online include not open­ing links or down­load­ing items from unknown senders, as well as installing a solu­tion like Avast Mobile Secu­ri­ty. Sim­i­lar­ly, there are steps women can take to detect and pro­tect them­selves against stalk­er­ware, includ­ing pro­tect­ing their phones with bio­met­ric logins, unique pins or pass­words, and installing antivirus soft­ware that will alert them to any attempt to install stalk­er­ware and help them remove it.

“The most vul­ner­a­ble part of the pop­u­la­tion can actu­al­ly pro­tect them­selves rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly. But they just don’t realise that they need to deploy some basic mech­a­nisms to do so,” says Baloo, who feels that many dig­i­tal secu­ri­ty firms have “cul­ti­vat­ed an envi­ron­ment of fear around tech­nol­o­gy with­out cul­ti­vat­ing equal trans­paren­cy in terms of what you can do to reduce that fear.” 

In oth­er words, while stalk­er­ware and scams pose a very real threat to vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, with the right infor­ma­tion and tools any­one can become a con­fi­dent and empow­ered dig­i­tal cit­i­zen, and enjoy all the ben­e­fits that tech­nol­o­gy has to offer.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it: www.avast.com

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on Avast’s Cyber­hood Watch pro­gramme please vis­it: www.avast.com/uk-cyberhood

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