Stalkerware users should be watching themselves, not others

21 March 2024

Sydney based Australian author Kerri Sackville, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, on the subject of stalkerware, insidious apps that track the activities of a person you want to keep tabs on:

But I had nothing to gain from spying on him because I already knew what to do. In intimate partnerships, the desire to spy can only mean one of two things: that something is terribly wrong in your relationship, or that something is terribly wrong with you. If it’s the former, the solution is not to dig up answers; the solution is to get out of the relationship.

But trust, or lack thereof, isn’t necessarily why people use stalkerware apps. They sometimes also seek to control and coerce those they are monitoring. To them, it has little to do with trust. It’s more about rampant entitlement. They somehow feel as if they have every right to spy on someone, and as such are completely oblivious to the wrong they are doing.

Something is indeed terribly wrong with such people.