iPad Spy Turns Jailbroken iPads Into A Privacy Nightmare

John Brownlee ()

iPad Spy Turns Jailbroken iPads Into A Privacy NightmareOstensibly for keeping track of your kids, employees or your child labor’s iPad surfing, Mobile Spy’s iPad Spy is probably really meant for the jealous paramour, the sleazy private dick or the professional identity thief: it allows you to record the email and website visits of anyone using the iPad on which it is installed.

iPad Spy runs as a background process, so it requires a jailbroken iPad to work. When it’s installed, there’s no hint that anything is running, but the software will record all of your emails and website visits and silently upload the data to a website to be perused by the (probably malicious) installer.

Sure, this technically could be used as another level of iPad parental controls, or to make sure your employees aren’t looking at porn on their company iPads, but let’s face it: this is really just for creeps. If you’re paranoid about such things, the best advice is to just not trust any iPad with a Cydia icon on the homescreen.

[via Gizmodo]

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About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in iPad, iPhone Apps, Jailbreak, News |

  • James T.

    People who jailbreak their iDevices are criminals who deserve anything bad that happens to them. Or, as Robert Browning so ably put it: “To the Devil that prompts ‘em their treasonous parles!”

  • Joshua Yates

    You’ve got to be kidding me. Last time I checked…I bought the device. I thought I owned it…

    Now, if you’re jail breaking to steal apps and get them for free, then I can agree with your statement.

  • Gazoobee

    @ Joshua: “James T.” might have gone a bit over the top, but let’s face it, the majority of folks who jailbreak actually *do* do it so as to get all the apps for free. There’s precious little reason left to do it anymore other than that.

  • Bobby

    I think the main reason millions have jb their phone is to multitask and have the Cydia app, not steal AppStore apps.

  • http://www.nimbling.com Herman

    *second that, I use a lot of interface tweaks *not* available on a regular iPhone. People that think jailbreaking is for criminals scare me. They stand nothing to lose by me using my device as I see fit, but would love to see other people hampered by their shortsightedness. Your complacence in matters like these lets lawyers run the world. Are you proud of yourself?

  • Rob

    @Joshua…I agree, but Apple sees it as you may have bought the device, but the software is theirs and not be altered. You are not altering the device hardware which would be okay, but hacking the Apple software to get Cydia to work.

    The way I see it… you should still be able to jailbreak it, but I’m not the one making the policies.