clubic.com
Par Alexandre Boero, Journaliste-reporter, responsable de l'actu.
Publié le 01 septembre 2025 à 08h04
La plateforme TikTok Shop commercialise des trackers GPS qui ressemblent au fameux AirTag d'Apple depuis des vidéos virales qui encouragent l'espionnage de ses proches ou de son ou sa partenaire. Les ventes dépasseraient déjà les 100 000 unités.
La marketplace de TikTok héberge des vendeurs de dispositifs de géolocalisation de type AirTag. Les commerçants opèrent leurs ventes à l'aide d'arguments publicitaires qui incitent directement à surveiller secrètement son partenaire. Des vidéos aux millions de vues, des dizaines de milliers de ventes, et une modération défaillante malgré les alertes ont été signalées aux États-Unis. Si la plateforme chinoise affirme interdire ces contenus, elle peine visiblement à les supprimer, ce qui contribue à normaliser les comportements abusifs sur le célèbre réseau social.
Des vidéos à plusieurs millions de vues normalisent sur TikTok l'espionnage conjugal
D'après l'enquête menée récemment par 404 Media, les vendeurs de trackers GPS assument totalement leur positionnement toxique. « Si ta copine dit qu'elle sort juste avec des amies tous les soirs, tu ferais mieux d'en coller un sur sa voiture », peut-on entendre dans une vidéo vue des millions de fois. Le dispositif, carrément présenté comme indétectable contrairement aux AirTags, fait miroiter aux potentiels acheteurs une surveillance mondiale, grâce à la carte SIM intégrée.
Les interactions sous ces publications sont d'ailleurs symptomatiques. Un utilisateur confie dans les commentaires : « J'en ai acheté et les ai mis sur les voitures de filles que je trouve attirantes à la salle de sport. » Oui, c'est flippant, surtout lorsque le vendeur répond avec désinvolture par un émoji rieur. D'après les métriques de TikTok Shop, l'un des traceurs s'est vendu à plus de 32 500 exemplaires, quand un autre affiche quasiment 100 000 unités écoulées.
Eva Galperin, co-fondatrice de la Coalition Against Stalkerware, la coalition contre les logiciels espions, est dépitée. « C'est tout bonnement présenté comme un outil d'abus. » Elle explique que tout dispositif justifié par « attraper son partenaire en train de tromper » facilite le contrôle coercitif. Le pire, c'est que les vidéos multiplient les prétextes pour essayer de toucher plus d'utilisateurs, comme une méfiance conjugale, les références à Coldplay et à l'ex-patron d'Astronomer piégé par une kiss cam, le tout avec des accroches comme « les hommes avec des femmes infidèles, vous pourriez en vouloir un ».
TikTok supprime quelques vidéos mais le problème persiste
Questionné par 404 Media, TikTok a supprimé certaines vidéos et banni un compte, en ajoutant interdire « les contenus qui encouragent la surveillance secrète ». Pourtant, au lendemain de la réponse, le média a déniché des vidéos identiques, qui restaient accessibles. Dès qu'un utilisateur clique sur l'une de ces vidéos, l'algorithme de TikTok Shop lui recommande des produits similaires, notamment des enregistreurs audio secrets vendus avec les mêmes arguments toxiques.
Aux États-Unis, d'où lesdites vidéos ont été publiées, onze États interdisent explicitement le tracking GPS dans leurs lois anti-harcèlement, et quinze considèrent comme illégale la surveillance véhiculaire sans consentement. Les vendeurs jouent sur l'ambiguïté. Certains vont même jusqu'à manier l'ironie dans leur vidéo : « C'est illégal de tracer les gens ? Je ne sais pas, je ne suis pas avocat, mais vous aurez probablement des problèmes ». On n'arrête pas les progrès, mais surtout les dérives.
The spyware operation's exposed customer email addresses and passwords were shared with data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned.
A security vulnerability in a stealthy Android spyware operation called Catwatchful has exposed thousands of its customers, including its administrator.
The bug, which was discovered by security researcher Eric Daigle, spilled the spyware app’s full database of email addresses and plaintext passwords that Catwatchful customers use to access the data stolen from the phones of their victims.
Catwatchful is spyware masquerading as a child monitoring app that claims to be “invisible and cannot be detected,” all the while uploading the victim’s phone’s private contents to a dashboard viewable by the person who planted the app. The stolen data includes the victims’ photos, messages, and real-time location data. The app can also remotely tap into the live ambient audio from the phone’s microphone and access both front and rear phone cameras.
Spyware apps like Catwatchful are banned from the app stores and rely on being downloaded and planted by someone with physical access to a person’s phone. As such, these apps are commonly referred to as “stalkerware” (or spouseware) for their propensity to facilitate non-consensual surveillance of spouses and romantic partners, which is illegal.
Catwatchful is the latest example in a growing list of stalkerware operations that have been hacked, breached, or otherwise exposed the data they obtain, and is at least the fifth spyware operation this year to have experienced a data spill. The incident shows that consumer-grade spyware continues to proliferate, despite being prone to shoddy coding and security failings that expose both paying customers and unsuspecting victims to data breaches.
According to a copy of the database from early June, which TechCrunch has seen, Catwatchful had email addresses and passwords on more than 62,000 customers and the phone data from 26,000 victims’ devices.
Most of the compromised devices were located in Mexico, Colombia, India, Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia (in order of the number of victims). Some of the records date back to 2018, the data shows.
The Catwatchful database also revealed the identity of the spyware operation’s administrator, Omar Soca Charcov, a developer based in Uruguay. Charcov opened our emails, but did not respond to our requests for comment sent in both English and Spanish. TechCrunch asked if he was aware of the Catwatchful data breach, and if he plans to disclose the incident to its customers.
Without any clear indication that Charcov will disclose the incident, TechCrunch provided a copy of the Catwatchful database to data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned.
Another little-known phone monitoring outfit has quietly amassed half a million customers, whose email addresses are now in Have I Been Pwned.
A bug in the Android and iPhone monitoring operations allows anyone to access private data exfiltrated from a victim's device.
Key findings from our analysis include:
Advanced Surveillance Capabilities:
Comprehensive Data Exfiltration:
Persistence Mechanisms:
Abuse of Legitimate Services:
Indicators of Compromise (IoCs):
Need for Collective Protection:
people frequently reach out to me with companies to look into. usually it takes me about 10 minutes before i move on for one reason or another—it's not interesting for a story or has good security, for example. i didnt expect anything different when an acquaintance told me about Tracki, a self-proclaimed "world leader in GPS tracking" that they suspected could be used nefariously.
at first glance, Tracki appeared to be a serious company, maybe even one that cared about security. we could never have guessed what was about to unfold before us.
half a year into our investigation, we'd found it all: a hidden conglomerate posing as five independent companies, masked from governments and customers alike through the use of dozens of false identities, US letterbox companies, and an undeclared owner. a 90s phone sex scheme that, through targeting by one of hollywood's most notorious fixers, spiraled into a collection of almost a hundred domains advertising everything from online dating to sore throat remedies. a slew of device-assisted murder cases, on top of potential data breaches affecting almost 12 million users, ranging from federal government officials to literal infants. and most importantly, a little-known Snoop Dogg song. how in the world did we get here?
starting our descent
PCTattletale is a simple stalkerware app. Rather than the sophisticated monitoring of many similarly insecure competitors it simply asks for permission to record the targeted device (Android and Windows are supported) on infection. Afterward the observer can log in to an online portal and activate recording, at which point a screen capture is taken on the device and played on the target's browser.
we continue our series on stalkerware with a write-up and batch of data sent to me by a source last night. this time it is the brazilian ownspy (aka webdetective and saferspy, by mobileinnova) that has been completely hacked. among other things ownspy claims to be the #1 most privacy focused "parental control app" allegedly featuring E2E encryption, if this sounds too good to be true that's because it mostly is, but more on that later.
year after it was banned by the Federal Trade Commission, a notorious phone surveillance company is back in all but name, a TechCrunch investigation has found.
A groundbreaking FTC order in 2021 banned the stalkerware app SpyFone, its parent company Support King, and its chief executive Scott Zuckerman from the surveillance industry. The order, unanimously approved by the regulator’s five sitting commissioners, also demanded that Support King delete the phone data it illegally collected and notify victims that its app was secretly installed on their device.
Leaked data obtained by TechCrunch reveals the notorious network of Android spyware apps tracked locations and recorded calls of Americans.
It's not just one spyware app exposing people's phone data, but an entire fleet of Android spyware apps that share the same security vulnerability.
