Abusers Could Use This Parenting Service to Secretly Track an Ex’s Tinder Usage

Online services that let parents secretly track their kids' smartphone usage—location, texts, Snapchats, and more—would be concerning enough, even if they weren't also used by abusive men to monitor their partners.

Now, a company called TeenSafe is opening a whole new can of worms by adding the option to track Tinder usage, Mashable reports. Without even downloading an app on the target's phone (all you need is an email and Apple ID password), TeenSafe allows the user to log on to its web service and see who the target swiped right on, who they ignored, and even read their messages on the hook-up app.

TeenSafe—which reportedly has more than one million users—uses data from phone backups done through the cloud, so targets can still be monitored as long as they don't change their password. "Seeing as the service only requires an Apple ID to work, devices that were recently cleaned can still work with TeenSafe without interruption," one review for the service states.

This is incredibly dangerous. Even if the app is meant to track teens, abusers use the same kinds of apps to track their partners and exes. TeenSafe makes you check a little box that affirms your promise to only use the service legally, under penalty of account suspension and deletion, but it may still be misused.

"All these systems that can be misused or abused by a parent to spy on a child—that's what they're doing—you can spy on anyone with it," said Jennifer Perry, CEO of UK anti-abuse group Digital-Trust. "These services are only legal when marketed as being for children, so that's the way they get away with marketing it as legal software."

"There's no way to verify it," she added.

Neither TeenSafe nor Tinder responded to Motherboard's request for comment within our publishing timeframe.

Digital surveillance is a well-established aspect of domestic abuse. Women's shelters make sure to screen incoming women's phones for tracking apps, NPR reported in 2014. Also in 2014, UK group Women's Aid ran a survey that revealed 41 percent of domestic abuse victims reported being electronically surveilled, with email and Facebook being the most common venues.

TeenSafe can't be detected by merely looking for an app on the target phone, since it uses a web app and an Apple ID, which only requires an email and a password. Passwords are what controlling abusers may ask for from their partners, Perry said, often under the auspices of merely looking out for their partner's safety.

And, yes, monitoring someone over the age of 18 without their consent is totally fucking illegal. TeenSafe gets around this by claiming that its stealthy deployment is only for use by legal guardians to check up on their kids.

"There is no doubt that it is a criminal offense to intercept people's communications in any way," said Canadian privacy lawyer David Fraser. "It's really as simple as that."

Our entire lives are on our phones, and tools like TeenSafe make it incredibly easy to access all of that information. Now that it's possible to monitor Tinder with this software, the game has gotten just that more treacherous.

Be safe out there. Go with your gut, and be careful with who you trust to hold onto your passwords.