Stalkerware allows individuals to secretly monitor romantic partners, family members, or associates by infecting their phones and collecting text messages, photos, location data, and other information. While the intrusive nature of the malware itself is a concern, digital rights advocates have long warned of the added risk of data breaches by unrelated actors, creating a privacy disaster. Recent research has revealed a stark example of this worst-case scenario. ### Exposed Celebrity Data Security researcher **Jeremiah Fowler** from **Black Hills Information Security** discovered a cloud repository publicly accessible without any access controls. This repository contained nearly 90,000 screenshots showing a European celebrity's private messages, photos, and phone usage, seemingly gathered through stalkerware. "All the selfies were one person, all the chats were one person, and it was basically everyone they chatted with divided into Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and WhatsApp," **Fowler** told WIRED. "There was a lot of nudity, there were pictures that you wouldn’t want out in the public." Among the images were screenshots capturing the celebrity's private conversations with models, influencers, and other high-profile individuals, some with millions of social media followers. The screenshots included business conversations with invoices and personal payment details, phone numbers, and partial credit card numbers. "You capture the initial victim, but you also victimize everyone they communicate with," **Fowler** stated. **Fowler** is withholding the victim's name and has reported the incident to law enforcement, emphasizing that even public figures deserve privacy. ### The Cocospy Connection While exposed cloud repositories are a recurring privacy issue, this case differed as the data appeared to belong to an individual rather than a company. The dataset's contents led **Fowler** to attempt contacting the victim and then notifying the cloud service hosting the data. The cloud company contacted the owner to secure the data. The hosting provider remains unnamed. The exposed files exhibited characteristics of data collected through spyware, including screenshots of sensitive digital activity taken over a specific period. **Fowler** noticed the repository was named "**Cocospy**," a notorious off-the-shelf spyware tool. The exposed data spanned from mid-2024 to mid-2025. ### Cocospy's History of Breaches Last year, **Cocospy** and related apps went offline after a data breach exposed user information. These apps suffered security breaches, revealing sensitive data. A flaw allowed access to troves of information gathered from stalkerware victims and exposed millions of **Cocospy** customer email addresses, as reported by TechCrunch. "Their malware on Android was full-blown spyware," said **Vangelis Stykas**, a security researcher and cofounder/CTO of **Kumio AI**, who analyzed **Cocospy**. "It pretty much uploads everything from your phone to their cloud." **Cocospy** included a "stealth mode" that could take screenshots every few minutes and upload pictures or application contents from the target device. "Having access to someone’s phone means you have unobstructed access to all of his or her life," **Stykas** added. An archived version of the **Cocospy** website from 2025 advertised the software as "parental control, tracking, and remote surveillance" with the ability to track locations, messages, calls, and apps discreetly. ### The Broader Implications **Fowler's** findings highlight the increasing exploitation of digital technology for surveillance, abuse, and harassment, particularly against women. Abusers use any available technology to monitor and control their partners, accessing and storing their data. Exposed personal information from leaks or data breaches can lead to harassment, identity theft, or other cybercriminal targeting. For those already targeted by technology abuse, the risks of data exposure are even more devastating. Online communities have been reported to dox women, share private images, and purchase hacking services to use against partners and friends. "They will sometimes put women’s contact details online with the intention that other men will cause harm to them," said **Katy Brookfield**, an associate criminology professor at the **University of Nottingham** who researches technology-facilitated abuse.