When phone becomes spy

In the market for mobile surveillance? Or want to know what someone else might be using on you? NATALIA DAVID offers a guide to Mobile Spy.

If you were to start shopping for mobile spy applications to help you monitor activities on a smart phone, you would have thousands of options. On the flip side, if you want to know what others might be using on you, the possibilities are endless.

Higher end choices, like iPhone or Windows Mobile Spy, can discreetly monitor almost all smart phone activities, including tracking location, intercepting communications, and even eavesdropping on the surroundings of the phone. Lower-end mobile spy applications might only track location or provide contact details.

For optimal monitoring capabilities, look for applications that includes these surveillance features:

Location Tracking: See where a monitored cell phone is at any given time, plus all the locations in which the phone has been when you install mobile spy software that includes location tracking. Based on GPS technology, this feature can be found in most advanced applications like Android or Windows Mobile Spy.

Listen Live to Cell Phone Surroundings: Ever wonder what someone is doing when they aren’t talking on their smart phone? With this advanced application, you can listen live to the cell phone surroundings without the user knowing their microphone is transmitting! Sophisticated surveillance features like this are typically found on higher-end software suites like Android, iPhone, or Windows Mobile Spy.

Contact Information: Once installed, any mobile spy app with this feature will instantly transmit all of the cell phone’s contact details to the user account. Top tier systems like iPhone and Windows Mobile Spy will also provide all Call Details, providing a daily log of all incoming and outgoing calls.

Reverse Phone Look-Up: This is not a common feature on most mobile spy applications but it’s a very handy tool for finally identifying those ‚anonymous callers‚ that seem to keep popping up.

Call Recording: After viewing the Call Details log for unknown or suspicious contacts, you can actually listen to the conversations if you installed mobile spy software with a Call Recording feature.

Video/Picture Log: Higher end suites like iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile Spy have a Video/Picture Log that will let you view every picture and video sent or received since installing the software.

Text Messages: From the moment you download and activate a mobile spy app with this feature, every incoming or outgoing text is recorded.

Internet Browsing History: A person’s Internet browsing habits can tell a lot about their behavior, social network, and interests. Sophisticated platforms like Android or Windows Mobile Spy with this surveillance feature can monitor all web browsing on a smart phone

Not all mobile spy apps are created equal so be sure to do your homework before buying ‚ or checking what someone else may have put on the phone.

* Natalia David is a blogger and author on PC security and iPhone spyware. Follow her on twitter @NataliaDavid4

* Follow Gadget on Twitter on @gadgetza