Canadian laws are failing to protect the victims of cellphone “stalkerware,” researchers say, allowing abusers to easily repurpose supposed child protection and employee monitoring technology as weapons of intimate partner violence. A pair of new reports from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, published Wednesday, investigate the digital ecosystem and legal gaps in which stalkerware thrives. “In theory, we found that there are laws in place to protect the victims of stalkerware,” says Cynthia Khoo, a research fellow at the Citizen Lab. In the U.S., the National Network to End Domestic Violence found that 54 per cent of abusers tracked victims’ cellphones with stalkerware. Another app identified by the reports as stalkerware only visibly advertises itself as a parental control tool.

Source: thestar June 12, 2019 09:00 UTC