FTC upholds ban on stalkerware founder Scott Zuckerman

Summary

A stalkerware maker who was banned from the surveillance industry after a data breach that exposed the personal information of its customers, as well as the people they were spying on, will not be able to go back to selling the invasive software, according the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The FTC denied a request to cancel that ban made by Scott Zuckerman, the founder of consumer spyware company Support King and its subsidiaries SpyFone and OneClickMonitor. On Monday, the FTC announced the denial in a press release after Zuckerman petitioned the federal watchdog to rescind or modify the ban order in July of this year. In 2021, the FTC banned Zuckerman from “offering, promoting, selling, or advertising any surveillance app, service, or business,” effectively preventing him from running another stalkerware business. The agency also ordered Zuckerman to delete all the data collected by SpyFone, as well as to undergo frequent audits and establish certain cybersecurity practices for his businesses. “SpyFone is a brazen brand name for a surveillance business that helped stalkers steal private information,” said Samuel Levine, then acting director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The stalkerware was hidden from device owners, but was fully exposed to hackers who exploited the company’s slipshod security.” In his petition, Zuckerman claimed that the FTC order’s security requirements have made it harder for him to run his other businesses due to financial costs, despite the fact that Support King is no longer in operation and he now only runs a restaurant and plans other “tourism ventures” in Puerto Rico, according to the petition. When reached via email, Zuckerman declined to comment and referred questions to his lawyer. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026 The FTC ban stemmed from an incident in 2018, when a security researcher found an Amazon S3 bucket belonging to SpyFone that left extremely sensitive data — including selfies, text messages,...