Find out if your partner is prying into your personal inbox
Find out if your partner is prying into your personal inbox
Ole Brockhuus and Annesophia Yttesen have invented an app – SpotTheSpy – which can warn you if anyone attempts to log in to your mailbox or read your Facebook messages.
The threat from hackers to both organizations, companies and private persons is becoming bigger and bigger – but a new telltale app will put an end to this problem. By using the SpotTheSpy app it becomes possible for people to monitor if hackers, partners or colleagues are prying into your private mailbox or are browsing through your Facebook conversations.
No more will your colleagues be able to nose around in your inbox - no more will your partner be able to read through your private messages on your Facebook profile - no more will it be possible for hackers to search through your online accounts for interesting and valuable information - or, in any case, no more can they do it without you knowing about it.
A married couple from Copenhagen will now address this problem with their SpotTheSpy app. The app cannot make the hackers keep their distance, but instead it is able to make its users aware if unwelcome persons have gained access to their inbox, etc.
“It is unacceptable that IT criminals steal your bank details. It is unacceptable that your partner reads your private messages on Facebook. Nor is it acceptable that colleagues pry into your inbox. But no matter who it is, SpotTheSpy gives you the possibility of throwing out the unwelcome guests and preventing them from seeing or stealing something that is yours,” says the co-founder and managing director of Linkfactory, - the people behind SpotTheSpy, Ole Brockuus.
The idea behind the app is quite simple - that its users receive a message if any other persons are logged in on to, for example, their mailbox or Facebook page, and then from there gives them the possibility of throwing out the intruder and changing the access code to the online account in question.
Using GPS technology to reveal all
Once one is connected to SpotTheSpy the app can then, by using the user’s GPS position on their telephone, find out if others are accessing the online accounts which are connected to the app.
What this means is that if the GPS location on your telephone tells the app that right now you are in one town, but the app can see that an IP address located in another town is logged in to your Facebook profile, then the app sends you an immediate message that others are prying around in your account - so you can then, via the app, both throw the unwelcome visitor out and change your access code to the account in question.
“In a time where we are experiencing hacker attacks and online fraud like never before, and where more than 100,000 Danes have experienced that others have gained access to their mails and personal conversations on the net, we believe that everyone has a right to live a secure life - also when they are online,” says Ole Brockhuus.
Together with his wife, Annesophia Yttesen, he owns and runs the company Linkfactory, which they founded in 2000. Linkfactory is an IT development house with twenty-five employees. Its customers are, to a large extent, organizations such as ministries and agencies, but they also do business with private firms such as Fitness.dk and Molio. The company provides design, advice and technical development within the web, apps, and membership systems. From their time at Linkfactory, the couple have acquired a broad knowledge of and gained insight into the phenomena of hacking.
The app is free – to begin with
Work on developing the app began over two years ago, and this year SpotTheSpy could initiate the first tests of the app, which to begin has been launched onto the market in Denmark - and in Poland, where Linkfactory has a department. The app was initially released for Android operating systems, but soon an Apple compatible version will follow. To begin, SpotTheSpy can be connected to monitor people’s Gmail and Facebook accounts, but the company will quickly follow up with several more online networks that the app can monitor.
“We will add one new network to the app every month. To begin, it will be social media sites we will add to the list,” says Ole Brockhuus, referring to Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn.
So far, the app is free to use, but when SpotTheSpy can see that users take the app to heart and use it to monitor several networks, then they will begin to charge for its use.
“When people begin to use it to such an extent that we can see that they become stable users, then we can begin to charge for using it. The aim is that the app will cost two Euros per month or twenty Euros per year,” says Ole Brockhuus.
A rush to secure the patent for the idea
Already in the same week that the idea for SpotTheSpy arose, the couple began to look into whether anyone else had thought of the same idea, and if the idea had been patented.
Luckily for them that was not the case, and they applied for a European patent immediately.
“We expect to have the patent in our hands before the beginning of the autumn. We have received positive commitments from the international patent authority in the EU – The European Patent Office (EPO), and the European countries are expected to follow their decision,” says Ole Brockhuus.
In the autumn SpotTheSpy will begin the process of applying for a patent for the product in the USA.
