TinyCheck, A Free Tool Presented To Fight The Growing Stalkerware Threat

TinyCheck, a free and open source tool to detect stalkerware and help victims (photo: Kaspersky)

JAKARTA - TinyCheck is a unique and innovative tool designed to detect stalkerware on mobile devices. Today, Kaspersky is unveiling a new hub dedicated to TinyCheck, highlighting the latest developments and changes to how you use TinyCheck. The site will also help bring together the community of stakeholders involved in the development of this tool and the fight against stalkerware and spyware.

TinyCheck was originally created in 2019 as a result of discussions between Kaspersky and a women's protection organization in France. This organization supports the increasing number of stalkerware victims, but they don't know how to fight stalkerware from a technology standpoint.

So they needed a solution that was untraceable, easy to use, and could help gather evidence. Kaspersky researchers then moved to find a solution.

TinyCheck was developed as a free and open-source tool so that anyone can download and contribute to the development of this software. TinyCheck is not installed to a smartphone but uses a separate external device, the Raspberry Pi microcomputer.

TinyCheck aims to facilitate the detection of stalkerware on the victim's device in an easy, fast, and unobtrusive way. TinyCheck can be run on any OS without warning stalkerware. In addition, TinyCheck is safe to use and does not read the content of its users' communications (SMS, email, etc.), and only interacts with online/IP servers that are used as smartphone communication lines.

This means that TinyCheck will not know who the user is talking to, or the content of the conversation. The network capture of the analyzed device is not shared with anyone, including Kaspersky or any other party receiving this data. All analyzes were performed locally.

Over time, more and more NGOs tried and implemented TinyCheck. Bruno Pérez Juncá, the honorary member of the Stop Gender Violence Association, shares his experience using TinyCheck.

“I have worked with gender violence associations for many years and TinyCheck is a tool that victims and the general public need. TinyCheck is similar to an antigen test: a fast, economical, and reliable test to perform an initial inspection that can identify mobile device infections,” explained Bruno, in a Kaspersky press release.

Recently, TinyCheck has also attracted the attention of institutions, journalists and companies in Europe. European law enforcement and judicial bodies are currently testing TinyCheck in order to better support victims in deposition or investigation processes.

The TinyCheck Hub is the site to visit to find out more about the software, how to use it, and how to contribute to the development of TinyCheck. Kaspersky is always looking for new partners to raise awareness of the importance of knowing about stalkerware and spyware, and looking for new ways to help victims.