According to many business analysts, the cell phone surveillance trade alone could be as large as twenty billion dollars a year. Not exactly small potatoes.

The technological advances in communications have placed powerful tools within reach of the consumer which turn SmartPhones into bugs, taps and trackers.  Previously, only the government had this capability. 

Parents may install surveillance software on their child's phone and it may be the perfect method to keep tabs on business co-workers, (with their permission). But the major reason the cell phone surveillance market is so potentially enormous is the jealousy of suspicious lovers and spouses. This green-eyed devil has spurred the development of several quality software/service cell phone surveillance companies.  Nearly all require you to spend five to ten minutes downloading the software directly onto the target phone, plus then erasing the confirmation text message.   The service continues on-line at the company's site where each activity of the target phone is stored. 

One can listen to phone calls, browse text messages plus e-mails, track location with GPS, plus even when the phone is off there is "environmental monitoring." That is a euphemistic way of saying the target phone has become a bug.

On the tutorial of one leading cell phone surveillance company, the "target" looks like a buxom figure in a bright pink dress, with a trio of heart-throbbing male figures labeled "third party,"  and the "monitor" is a suspicious figure in a bowler hat. A person could readily conclude that the majority of of the cell phone surveillance business's $20B annual potential can be from guys snooping on their wives or girlfriends.  Or the ladies snooping on their husbands or boyfriends

Such power raises all manner of legal and ethical issues.  In most countries this kind of invasive activity is illegal without at least informing the target.  One needs to have both the gall to cross a legal line, and the required guile to get several minutes alone with the target phone.

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