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In Manhattan's West Village, a cozy-looking unit at 45 Christopher St. comes with a fireplace, lots of built-in shelves -- and a celeb right down the way.

It seems that the creators of two phone surveillance businesses have closed down their operations after the owner reached a settlement with the authorities on allegations of unlawfully advertising malware that his company created. PhoneSpector and Highster were consumer-grade phone monitoring applications that enabled surreptitious surveillance of an individual’s smartphone. Referred to as stalkerware or …

The makers of two phone surveillance services appear to have shuttered after the owner agreed to settle state accusations of illegally promoting spyware that his companies developed. PhoneSpector and Highster were consumer-grade phone monitoring apps that facilitated the covert surveillance of a person's smartphone. In February 2023, Patrick Hinchy, whose consortium of New York and Florida-based tech companies developed PhoneSpector and Highster, agreed to pay $410,000 in penalties to settle accusations that Hinchy's companies advertised and "aggressively promoted" spywar...

The domains, servers, websites and backend infrastructure known to be used by PhoneSpector and Highster stalkerware are also no longer online.

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