V says stalkerware is on her devices and asks what she can do
I reached out to another team within our organization called Safety Net, which deals specifically with misuse of technology and abuse. Here are a few things that they pointed out that I hope are helpful:
- Safety Net has written resources on stalkerware and spyware as well as tech talk on stalkerware could be of interest to you
- Some anti-malware apps are able to detect and remove some stalkerware. We don’t endorse products, but just as a few examples in case you want to research and evaluate them are: Malwarebytes, Norton, and Kaspersky – they all have some level of ability to do this. Computers running mainstream operating systems usually come with okay built-in malware protection these days, but phones and tablets not as much, and many people don’t realize that they could benefit from installing an app.
- The Coalition Against Stalkerware website has information that may be helpful.
- Multi-factor authentication, which Safety Net talks about in their passwords resource can be helpful. Specifically, you might be interested in using a hardware token as your second authentication factor for accounts where it’s possible, because it means that nobody could get into those accounts without physical possession of the token.