Warning: This article contains references to domestic abuse and stalking
As Melody* got off the bus, her heart stopped. Her ex was charging towards her, a smirk on their face.
The city centre street was eerily empty and she felt panic clench at her chest as Alex* bore down on her.
Melody gestures an arm’s length in front of her: how close Alex came before veering away. “They were intensely staring at me – it was like they knew what they were doing.”
It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Alex was making a habit of turning up in places Melody hadn’t told anyone she would be, miles from where they lived. “I thought I’d been microchipped – like a cat. How else would they know so much about me?”
Alex was “coercive and controlling” during their relationship, Melody says. They forced her to move cities, micromanaged her life – even making her leave the door open when she used the toilet – and controlled what she ate, what she wore, and who she saw.
Melody, whose identity is protected for security reasons, told Sky News her ex was stalking her for months after their relationship ended
After they broke up, Alex still made their presence felt by appearing unexpectedly. Not knowing how her ex was tracking her left Melody living in fear. She knew what Alex would do to keep her under control and she had seen them get aggressive.
“I’ve never felt so frightened in all my life. The way this goes according to my domestic abuse support workers is: the next step they will kill you.”
Her phone battery had been draining faster than usual; she wondered if that could be linked to the tracking.
A trip to a phone repair shop uncovered a hidden app called mSpy that was feeding everything on Melody’s phone – including her exact location – to a remote dashboard, accessible to the person who installed it.
There was no icon to show her it was there. No notification to let her know she was being monitored.
“I felt like my entire life had been ripped from me,” she says. “They could see everywhere I’d been. Every person I’d spoken to. Everything in my diary. Stuff to the police and to court.”
mSpy is what is known as stalkerware: software covertly installed on someone’s phone so they can be monitored remotely.
The most common features of these apps include tracking someone’s location, spying on messages and calls, remotely activating their camera and viewing social media and browsing history, according to researchers at Montreal’s Concordia University, who identify mSpy as stalkerware.
mSpy offers all these features – and more – but markets itself as “for parental control”. It cropped up in three lists of commonly detected stalkerware provided to Sky News by several cyber security companies. Of the 18 apps they flagged,14 are advertised as parental control software.
Advertising this way is a common tactic by stalkerware apps because it lets them skirt laws on covert surveillance, according to David Emm, a top researcher at cyber security company Kaspersky.
But there is also a booming market for legitimate parental control or “family tracking” apps – the kind that let you see your child’s location, limit their screen time and control their internet access.
Domestic abusers are increasingly using these apps, designed with children’s safety in mind, to monitor their partners, according to tech experts and domestic abuse frontline workers.
‘In the wrong hands they can be abused’
Being under surveillance has changed Caitlin’s* life: “I’ve moved house. My car’s changed, my job’s changed, kids’ schools have changed. I can’t go anywhere that I used to go.”
The monitoring started with Life360, a popular family tracking app that lets you share live locations. She says her ex convinced her to download it while she was pregnant, saying it was for her safety.
“It was only when I realised the app wasn’t being used for the right reasons that I started feeling unsafe,” Caitlin says.
Her ex monitored her every movement. If she wasn’t where he expected, she says, he would make her send photos to prove her whereabouts or show him receipts from the shops she had visited.
“I would get the silent treatment, or he would become quite violent,” she says.
Russell Kent-Payne, a cyber security expert, explains that apps such as Life360 are not “designed to be stalkerware… But in the wrong hands they can be abused.”
He adds: “It is something we are hearing reports of much more nowadays than we did several years ago.”
And data tells a similar story. Gen Digital, whose anti-virus products include Avast and Norton, said stalkerware increased globally by 239% between 2020 and 2023. It said parental control apps have become some of the most prevalent forms of stalkerware.
So when is something a parental control app, and when does it become a tool of abuse?
The key issue is consent, explains Eva Galperin, co-founder of the Coalition Against Stalkerware, which unites domestic abuse organisations and IT security companies combating tech abuse.
Software that hides on a phone is “de facto abusive”, she says. And someone in a coercively controlling relationship “agreeing” to download tracking software cannot be considered to be consenting.
Caitlin says her ex tried to stop her from having friends; she couldn’t even go for a walk without being interrogated. His abuse was “getting out of control”, she says – “but I didn’t realise at that point it was domestic abuse”.
Sky News contacted mSpy and Life360, but neither responded to questions about the allegations around how their technology is used by domestic abusers.
Experts say part of the problem is how normalised location-sharing apps have become.
It’s a “pernicious problem”, says Sara Kirkpatrick, chief executive of Welsh Women’s Aid. “We have sleepwalked into a situation where these things… can be used for malicious purposes.”
Tech abuse is no different from other types of abuse where “it’s the normal things that are weaponised”, she says.
Smart home tech, including ring doorbells and smart speakers, along with Bluetooth GPS trackers and apps that use location settings, offer more options for digital surveillance than ever before – even when products were not designed with that in mind.
The pace of development shows no sign of slowing – but there is little regulation to ensure the next generation of tech won’t be similarly exploited by abusers.
Emma Pickering, head of tech abuse at the domestic abuse charity Refuge, says this combination of factors creates a “ripe environment” for someone intent on tracking and abusing their partner.
Domestic violence affects more than two million UK adults. Charities report that 85% of them will have been subjected to some form of tech abuse, from GPS tracking to having their accounts hacked, receiving threatening messages and having intimate images shared online.