Psyops and Paranoia: FlexiSpy’s Stalkerware Sales Advertising Techniques.

How one surveillance company manufactured insecurities to sell surveillance software…

Hello folks!

It’s your self-proclaimed favourite anti-mass-surveillance agony aunt — Ms Asher Wolf — here to chat with you all about — fucking wait for it — tabloid gossip blogs, paranoia and spyware.

I don’t love publicly discussing surveillance. It shakes the kooks out of the woodwork, brings the trolls crawling into my twitter mentions, and pisses off the techbros. Frankly I can do without that shit.

But something got under my skin, and so I want to talk to you today about fear and loathing in relationships — and advertising psyops run by surveillance companies.

Here we go…

As some of you smart young people may well be aware, surveillance firm FlexiSpy was hacked beyond all belief by over the last few days.

No? Doesn’t ring a bell? Let me fill you in.

FlexiSpy is essentially a stalkerware company, selling mobile phone spy-software to the mum-and-dad domestic homemaker market and the “hmmmm, is my partner cheating?” crowd.

Anyway, FlexiSpy got hacked. Very, very hacked actually, by a group of allegedly brilliant hackers who suggested I describe their collective as a “shadowy amorphous internet vigilante-blob.” They tell me they’d like to be known as ‘The Decepticons.’

FlexiSpy also ran a blog (called FlexiMinx) that posted bullshit posts about cheating celebrities. Wat. Yes, that’s right, a spyware company was also running a blog about cheating celebs.

But so what? Who even cares? And why the fuck would a company selling spyware also post articles about cheating celebrities?

FlexiSpy’s aim is always sell their product. If you scroll to the bottom of FlexiMinx’s ridiculous blog posts, you find every one of their concocted articles about fake celebrity cheating scandals end with a suggestion that insecure readers try out FlexiSpy’s surveillance software on their loved ones.

FlexiSpy’s blog hyped and exploited people’s fear of cheating spouses and partners to sell shitty surveillance software. And it’s not ok. Not fucking ok at all.

I spoke with one of ‘The Decepticons’ hackers who goes by the moniker ‘Leopard Boy’:

“Some of the customers approached by ‘Motherboard’ said this was normal behaviour, that was somehow justified. It’s not. It’s abusive.

Companies like FlexiSpy manipulate people, prey on their fears, stoke their paranoia by running things like a gossip blog about people cheating, adverts asking people if they know where their partner or kids are, and implying they somehow have a right to invade the privacy or the ones they supposedly love.”

It’s a new level of sick sad world when some shitty spyware firm peppers insecurity through people’s lives via d-grade blogs about confected celebrity cheating scandals to make money off customers’ paranoia

There’s no healthy relationship that involves spying. If you’re spying on your partner or child or friends’ calls or texts without their knowledge and permission, that’s fucked up beyond belief. And you should stop.

Healthy relationships need trust and open communication. If you’ve loaded spyware onto the phone of someone you claim to love… it’s not love. And it’s not trust either. It’s controlling, stalky, creepiness. And it’s just wrong.

Maybe you’re not that controlling asshole tracking your ex-partner who’s currently hiding out on a friend’s couch or at a domestic violence refuge (statistics suggest you may well be a violent domestic abuser, though.)

Maybe you’re just “very invested.” Maybe you think you’re just “being caring” or “keeping a close eye.” But let’s get something straight: you’re acting like a fucking psychopath.

Thousands of people doing exactly the same thing as well doesn’t make spying a cinch more acceptable. Congrats! You paid to join an exclusive club of utter cunts who treat their nearest and dearest as the equivalent of goddamn fucking zoo animals to be stared at through a one-way glass.

Please, don’t let me preach from on high about relationship values, especially not when my most long-term enduring relationship has been with a plastic battery-operated device.

Instead, let me quote from C.S. Lewis’ ‘Narnia’:

“Oh, that? I never thought it was eavesdropping, Aslan. Wasn’t it magic?”

“Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way.”

Look, even the fictional lion in a children’s novel gets it: spying on people is fucked up, no matter how you do it. It doesn’t matter if you’re listening in on conversations from the next room or remotely tracking your partner’s life via mobile phone: it’s fucked.

It doesn’t matter how rich or powerful you are: spying is pondscum tacky behaviour.

If you track other people without their permission, your life relies on scrambling for power over others, rather than training yourself in the ability to control the emotions within yourself.

The great redeeming quality of humanity is our ability to change. We can re-write code to hack states of surveillance, change laws that fail to protect people from spying, fix our relationships… and delete spyware, wherever we find it.

I’ll let Leopard Boy have the last words:

“Everyone deserves privacy. Except maybe FlexiSpy themselves: we think they might have surrendered that right. Be good, be kind to one another, and if you’re technical, help fight this kind of software.”