FTC orders company to quit surveillance app business

BOSTON : The Federal Trade Commission has for the first time banned a company that makes so-called stalkerware – software used to surreptitiously track a cellphone user’s activities and location – from continuing in the surveillance app business.

Wednesday’s action applies to the marketer of SpyFone, Puerto Rico-based Support King LLC, and its CEO, Scott Zuckerman. Such commercial surveillance products secretly obtain unfettered access to someone’s smartphone, leading to serious harm, the FTC said in a statement on its website.