Smartphone tracking

Even with many years in the information technology industry, I still have enough humanity left to be surprised by this type of cuberstalking. The phone surveillance with our stalker could actually could be documented going over 7 years back to as early as 2011-2012. There are portions of this article which are, and may end up being their own topics, but this part of the story gives you a glimpse into the world of software available for anyone who wants to keep a closer eye on anyone else. Before we get going here are some definitions from the internet. Hacked Phone or Phone Hacking: the action or practice of gaining unauthorized access to data stored in another person's phone, especially in order to access their voicemail. Cloned Phone: phone cloning, lets you intercept incoming messages and send outgoing ones as if your phone were the original. If both phones are near the same broadcast tower, you can also listen in on calls. To clone a phone, you have to make a copy of its SIM card, which stores the phone's identifying information. Some softwares do different things. Some clone the phone and others just hack into the phone for specific information. Some can be downloaded onto the phone from a link. In our case we are quite sure the phone was cloned because the phone in question was stolen at one point yet returned in an odd way a few days later, leaving plenty of time to clone the SIM card. To find out more about the tracking software out there let's start out by doing a simple search on either your Google Play store or your Apple Store for a search like; 'smartphone tracker software' 'phone tracker' 'remote cell phone tracker' Anyhow... You get the idea. Just talk to your phone and you will see just so many results. Basically for free or as much money as you want to spend you can track nearly anyone, access their activity remotely from a desktop, listen to calls, read emails and texts and get alerts when they are making calls. And of course you can also know where they are at any time from the GPS on their phone. However, poorly made software is poorly made software and as most anyone with any experience in the software world will tell you, you do get what you pay for. So, when more than one blue dot shows up in the mapping services of your Google account, or you are watching the tracked phone and you are in one location but your phone's blue dot is actually in another via Google's Location services... your stalker may not be entirely busted but, your status as a target has just been confirmed. Now I didn't go as far as trying these out myself. Some of my programming friends said most tracking software is akin to an STD that no Smartphone antibiotic will work on and you may not be able to see it but you will likely never be able to get rid of it. A factory reset will get rid of most of these softwares but not all of them. Ultimately it is a new device that will stop this. Newer Smartphones have better security against tracking software as well. Now the next bit of fun comes with the ever not so helpful service providers when you start tracing said activity. Even with a police report no one, no one will step out of the legal verbiage laden world that protects service providers against the inherent weaknesses in softwares, Smartphones, and cell services when people start using them as a weapon against someone else. That being said any screen grabs, log data and whatever information you have in your Apple or Android Account will serve useful for your own investigative efforts. If you are like me at all and turning the tables on any bully has a certain appeal well... you can certainly have fun with this. I certainly did. If nothing else it did yield plenty of proof that the stalking had extended right to the cell phone.