Google Finally Shuts Catwatchful Spyware’s Account

TechCrunch had reported to Google almost a month ago that a spyware namely Catwatchful was hosting its operation on the tech-giant’s servers. We did not get to hear from Google anytime soon. But finally, after a month, it shut down the account of the operator of the spyware.

Google finally shuts down the operator account of Catwatchful spyware

Catwatchful, a phone surveillance platform that was operating on Google’s Firebase servers for almost a month now, has finally been shut down. Confirming the action, the spokesperson of Google says to TechCrunch, “We’ve investigated these reported Firebase operations and suspended them for violating our terms of service”.

The spyware was being disguised as a “child monitoring” application on Android. But once installed on the device, it would turn into spyware. It would start collecting almost all the important data of the user, be it photos, messages, location, or even emails. And all this happens while the app remains out of the user’s sight.

That’s not all, in a finding by Eric Daigle, it was revealed that this spyware was involved in a massive data breach. A total of 62,000 users’ email and passwords were stored in plain text format, and over 26,000 Android devices were compromised. The worst part is that anyone could access this information without any authentication.

It took a long time to finally shut down the spyware

Catwatchful is one of those spyware programs that plays with the important data of the user. And it does this while practicing poor standards of authenticity and user safety. Sure, Google did shut down Catwatchful’s developer account. But it took almost a month to finalize the investigation and to suspend the account of the developer. The process could have been much faster, but here we are. Cases like this raise serious concerns about data privacy online.