United States of America: Federal Trade Commission issued interim ruling banning SpyFone and Chief Executive Officer from surveillance business and ordering deletion of illegally harvested data

On 1 September 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued an administrative complaint and accepted a consent order banning Support King, LLC, operating as SpyFone, and its Chief Executive Officer from engaging in the surveillance business over allegations of secretly harvesting and sharing personal data from stalkerware applications. The order requires deletion of all information collected through the unlawful surveillance, notification to device owners that their devices may have been monitored, and imposes prohibitions on offering, promoting, selling, or advertising any surveillance application or related service. The FTC alleged that the company’s applications enabled covert monitoring of photos, text messages, web histories, GPS locations, and other personal information, while directing purchasers to bypass operating system restrictions and conceal the software from device users, including through rooting requirements. The complaint further cited failures to implement basic data security practices, including storage of unencrypted data and transmitting purchaser passwords in plain text, which led to a 2018 breach exposing the data of approximately 2'200 consumers. The Commission voted 5-0 to issue the proposed administrative complaint and consent order, which the FTC will publish in the Federal Register for a 30-day public comment period, after which the Commission will determine whether to make the order final.