The trio’s phone surveillance app, which won spy on millions of people’s phones earlier this year, has gone offline.
Cocospy, Spyic, and Spyzie are three almost identical but different branded stalkerwear apps that allow you to plant one of the apps in your personal data on your target phone. This is usually without the person’s knowledge, such as messages, photos, call logs, real-time location data.
Stalkerware apps such as Cocospy and its clones are designed to remain hidden from the device’s home screen, making apps difficult for victims to detect, but they allow the apps to be continuously available to those who planted them.
In February, security researchers told TechCrunch that the app shares the same security flaws that allow anyone to access personal data on any device using any of the apps that have the app installed. The flaw also revealed the scale of the spy operations behind these apps by publishing the email addresses of all users who signed up for these spyware services with the aim of planting spyware on someone’s phone.
Researchers used the bug to scrape off 3.2 million email addresses for CocoSpi, Spychic, and Spyzie customers, and to scrape out Spyzie customers who provided those email addresses to data breach notification sites.
Following a report on the violation, TechCrunch discovered that the stalkerware app has since stopped working, the website has disappeared and the Amazon host’s cloud storage has been removed.
It is not clear why the stalkerware operation was closed. The operator could not be reached for comment.
Consumer-grade phone monitoring operations are usually known to shut down (or completely rebrand) following hacks or data breaches to escape legal and reputable fallouts. Letmespy, a spyware developed from Poland, confirmed a “permanent shutdown” in August 2023 after a data breaches wiped out the developer’s servers. US spyware maker Pctattletleal went out of business and closed in May 2024 following a decline in hacks and websites.
Cocospy, Spyic, and Spyzie are one of the latest apps on the list of dozens of phone surveillance operations that have hacked or exposed hacked or victim data as a result of insufficient tinsel coding or security practices. TechCrunch counts have resulted in at least 25 Stalkerware operations being violated since 2017, with at least 10 operations, including Cocospie, that have been stopped in the wake of the violation.
Phone monitoring apps like Cocospy are often sold under the guise of parental control or tracking software, but are also called “stalkerware” (or spouseware) because they tend to spy on a person’s spouse or partner without consent, or because they are explicitly sold.
Therefore, the Stalkerware app is prohibited from the app store and cannot be promoted on search engines. Web hosts like Amazon, which hosted the phone data for Stalkerware Operations’ “Stolen Victim Cache,” also claim that the monitoring operation would ban the use of the platform.
Currently, the Cocospy app trio is non-operating and its servers are offline, but affected individuals need to take action to remove spyware from their phones.
To detect Cocospy, Spyic, and Spyzie on your Android smartphone, you can usually enter ✱✱001 on the phone app’s keypad and then press the “Recall” button. This backdoor feature will prompt you to see it on the screen if you have a hidden stalkerware app installed.
From here you can remove malicious apps that appear from your device as a general-looking app called a “system services.”
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If you or someone you know needs help, the domestic domestic violence hotline (1-800-799-7233) provides secret support to victims of domestic abuse and violence 24/7. If you are in an emergency, call 911. If you think your phone is compromised by Spyware, then the federation against Stalkerware has resources.