There’s a new jailbreak app on the block, and it doesn’t place nice. MobileMonitor is perhaps the scariest activity monitoring tool we’ve come across for the iPhone, and it’s available for anyone to download in the jailbreak equivalent to the App Store, Cydia.
Once installed, not only does MobileMonitor become untraceable on the iPhone itself, but it records and uploads all of your personal data to a website that can be accessed by anyone with the correct login information.
Jeff of iDownloadBlog demonstrates the eerie capabilities of MobileMonitor in this video walkthrough:
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ-TCDuzsyk
The app not only tracks your call and SMS history, but also what pictures you take, what websites you visit, and your GPS location. Someone with physical access to the device could install this on a jailbroken iPhone without the owner ever knowing. MobileMonitor becomes undetectable once installed, and you can only see what the package contains in Cydia once its completely uninstalled.
After the 24-hour free trial, it costs $19.90 per month to use MobileMonitor to its full potential. A login is created that can be used to access your iPhone’s activity from the MobileMonitor website. The app has you agree to a long EULA before you begin using it to track information, as we’re sure the folks behind MobileMonitor want to cover their tracks as much as possible.
For employers or parents, something like MobileMonitor could prove to be useful. (And even then it’s still a little excessive.) But the fact remains that an iPhone must be jailbroken in the first place to install the app. In the grand scheme of things, most people don’t jailbreak, and most employers don’t think of jailbreaking their employees’ iPhones to install software like MobileMonitor.
The moral of the story is that there’s scary stuff out there on iOS, and you shouldn’t assume that you’re safe just because you have an iPhone. Also, if you do jailbreak, be smart about what you’re installing from Cydia.
