Coalition Against Stalkerware: New members and territories join fight against digital violence

The fight to protect consumers against stalkerware continues as eleven new organizations – AEquitas with its Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center (SPARC), Anonyome Labs, AppEsteem Corporation, bff Bundesverband Frauenberatungsstellen und Frauennotrufe, Centre Hubertine Auclert, Copperhead, Corrata, Commonwealth Peoples’ Association of Uganda, Cyber Peace Foundation, F-Secure, and Illinois Stalking Advocacy Center – join the Coalition Against Stalkerware. Since its launch in November 2019, the Coalition Against Stalkerware now has 21 partners, including founding partners – Avira, Electronic Frontier Foundation, the European Network for the Work with Perpetrators of Domestic Violence, G DATA Cyber Defense, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, The National Network to End Domestic Violence, NortonLifeLock, Operation Safe Escape, and WEISSER RING. The Coalition seeks to combine its partners’ expertise in domestic violence survivor support, digital rights advocacy, and cybersecurity to address the criminal behavior perpetrated by stalkerware and to raise general awareness about this important issue.

Domestic violence increases due to lockdowns

Growing the number of organizations united to fight stalkerware has never been more important than during these exceptionally difficult times. With lockdowns globally in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic violence incidents are increasing according to the US-based National Network to End Domestic Violence.[1] Other Coalition partners from different territories report similar increases[2], and the United Nations (UN) recognizes this as well. In early April, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, explained that worldwide, the negative consequences caused by lockdowns are borne more by women as their risk of suffering from domestic violence is more likely to increase.[3] As well as physical abuse, many of these women need to be afraid of finding stalkerware on their phones. This is one of the most concerning problems resulting from domestic violence in general, not

Joint efforts

With the goal of helping victims and educating the public about the dangers of stalkerware, the founding members of the Coalition created a standard definition and detection criteria for stalkerware, which did not previously exist. During the first few months of their efforts, the Coalition partners have focused on raising greater awareness of stalkerware advocacy organizations, journalists, and regulators through public speeches[KS1] , events[KS2] , publications, research[KS3] , and collecting the cybersecurity vendors’ data on stalkerware.

“The threat of stalkerware is constantly on our radar. In April 2020 alone, we detected that 8,201 users worldwide had stalkerware installed on their mobile devices. While in April 2019, this number was 7,736. We see that statistics are changing from month to month and year to year. To further improve the detection of such software in the cybersecurity industry, we are glad to see more organizations joining the Coalition Against Stalkerware and therefore sharing our knowledge with and inside this group dedicated to protecting users against stalkerware. Beyond detection, further research on the link between cyberviolence, physical violence and the gendered nature of stalkerware use is crucial in order to develop a clearer picture and better understanding of this issue. For that we are proud to be working together with our fellow Coalition members,” – said Tatyana Shishkova, Senior Malware Analyst, Kaspersky