Who Are Mobile Spy?
Spy Phone Review takes a look through the major smartphone vendors and below we start with Mobile Spy.
Mobile Spy’s Virtual office address in the USA projecting a US image, but actually based in India. It has spyphone software products for Windows Mobile (WM), Symbian 8 and 9, and iPhone.
For full details of their products, features offered and just as important, the mobile phones they support please click here.
Mobile SPY is the runner up for spy software. It is cheaper than FlexiSPY and offers a similar feature set, and has a good interface, however we couldn’t give it high marks on reliability, secrecy, and features (when compared against FlexiSPY). While we were overall pleased with Mobile Spy’s performance (once we got it working on our device) the overall feeling was that it was a good product that just needs a few more years to mature.
Very simply, Mobile Spy is not invisible after installation and relatively easy to find.
On Symbian based handphones Mobile Spy is visible in the location where you would expect to find installed software in the application manager on Symbian based handphones as a SettingsUI file, in the My Documents, Program Files, and in the Windows/Startup folder as primary output from smartphone file on Windows Mobile handphones, and on iPhones it can be found in the Cydia installer application used to install programs on jail broken iPhones.
More importantly any handphone owner can check to see if Mobile Spy is installed on their handphone by keying the secret key sequence *0123456789* that the company openly displays on its website and which is used to access Mobile Spy’s control functions. Keying this control sequence into a handphone will result in the Mobile Spy splash screen appearing on the screen of the target handphone. If you have secretly installed this software on your spouses handphone it is quiet likely the result of them detecting Mobile Spy on their handphone will end up in you rapidly having a steak knife plunged through your heart.
In fairness Retina-X Studios conveniently lists the methods to remove Mobile Spy from the target handphone on its website. This is exceptionally honest, and shows that they also do not believe that their product is spyware.
In other words for those of you who need ultimate discretion, the likelihood of being caught using Mobile Spy is very, very real.
Documentation
Retina-X has a very nice, clean website and navigating around it is fairly easy. There is plenty of information available online, but there is no option for downloading this for offline reading. While the company has individual installation guides for each of the operating systems it supports, there are no screen shots or Flash videos depicting the installation process.
Installation
After purchasing Mobile Spy you need to register a user name and password that will be tied to the handphone you intend to install Mobile Spy on, as well as the registration number the company supplies you with at the time of purchase. You also need to enter a a valid email address for support purposes.
Once this is completed access the company’s download site that matches the operating system of the target handphone and the software will be downloaded and available for installing. To activate the software you need to reboot the target handphone and then enter a command sequence to make the application visible. Simply enter the username and password you registered on the company’s website prior to downloading the software and define the internet access point that will be used by Mobile Spy to upload event information for viewing. Once this is achieved select Hide and then reboot the handphone again to make the application invisible.
The fact that the username and password you register on the website are the same that you enter into the target handphone is another serious security breach and another good reason why Mobile Spy cannot be regarded as much more than an amusing toy, rather than a serious spyphone application.
Another potential problem is that Mobile Spy requires the installation of the .NET framework on many older Windows Mobile devices. This will require you to connect the phone to a computer, making installation much more onerous that if .NET was not needed
True spyphone software
From my research there are a number of products on the market that claim to be spyphone products and Mobile Spy is just one of them. With its limited features and fairly easily detected footprint Mobile Spy cannot be considered a true spyphone application in the same context as FlexiSPY.
Controlling spyphone software
With Mobile Spy, controlling event reporting is a very basic function. Reports can be set to be uploaded to the online data repository in five minute increments, with a maximum of three hours between reports only able to be defined. The software does have an option to set report logging based on a pre-defined number of events, but I was unable to get this function to work. In addition, to change the reporting frequency you need to have access to the target handphone as there is no capability with Mobile Spy to remotely control report delivery. To stop Mobile Spy from reporting events you also need access to the target handphone.
In summary, there is no way to remotely control Mobile Spy.
Cost of ownership
Mobile Spy uses the target handphone to transmit the captured spy information to an online data repository where the information can be viewed by the spying party at a later date. This is achieved using the target handphones inbuilt GPRS capability.
GPRS is by far the best way for transmitting reports as it allows the costs incurred on the target handphone to be minimized. While Mobile Spy allows reports to be spaced out up to three hours, it does not permit reports to be set to be uploaded to the online repository at times when the target handphone is unused, such as 4.00am, once a day.
Support
Of seven attempts I made to contact Mobile Spy I was unable to contact their online support staff once, while the seven support questions I emailed them resulted in no replies at all.
Conclusion
While Mobile Spy might at first glance appear to offer good value for money if all that is required is SMS/text messaging and voice call monitoring, the very real likelihood of being detected makes it non-player and a product that has novelty appeal only.
Another important factor that should be considered is that Mobile Spy is sold with either a three, six or 12 month license and at the end of the license period the software must be removed from the target handphone. Failure to to remove the software from the target handphone at the end of the license period will result in the target handphone displaying a Invalid Login message each time the software attempts to upload recorded events to the company’s online data repository.
In short, Mobile Spy might at first blush appear to have some usefulness, but in reality it lacks the sophistication and control to be considered a serious spyphone product.