We told you about the cellphone-tapping-related phobia that was racking Greece here.  Now a program that enables private citizens to track cellphone users' calls, texts and Net activity has come to our attention.

FlexiSpy is a practically invisible cellphone application that enables people to keep tabs on other people's cellphone-related activities.  It's being marketed by a company called Vervata as a tool to monitor spouses and kids.  Captured data is sent to Vervata's servers and can be accessed on special web pages.

Software like this for PCs has already fallen foul of many groups, and this one is proving no different.  

Security company F-Secure claims that FlexiSpy is a trojan - in computerese, a malicious program that makes its way into devices by disguising itself as something harmless or beneficial.  The application apparently installs itself without providing any indication as to what it is, and once installed conceals itself from the user.  Not only that, but F-Secure says that FlexiSpy could be intentionally manipulated and made into an autonomous program, like a virus or worm, and used to target phones.  (Vervata, though, insists that FlexiSpy needs to be consciously installed or activated.)

We think this could be the start of something big if it takes off - and if governments and/or citizens don't kill it off first.  We're hoping they manage to, though; as Greece is showing us, societies can't function properly under the threat of constant communication surveillance.

[Via News.com]