Detection of stalkerware and other applications
December 26, 2023
ID 222844
Some legitimate applications can be used by criminals to steal your personal data and spy on you. Most of these applications are useful, and many people benefit from using them. These applications include IRC clients, autodialers, file downloaders, system activity monitors, password management utilities, FTP, HTTP, or Telnet servers.
However, if criminals get access to these apps on your computer or manage to covertly deploy them there, they will be able to use some of the functionality to steal your personal data or commit other illegal actions.
Below you will information about various types of software that criminals can use.
You can enable protection from stalkerware and other applications that can be used by criminals, and we will warn you if we discover such applications.
To enable protection from stalkerware and other applications:
- Open the main application window.
- Click in the lower part of the main window.
This opens the Settings window.
- Go to Security settings → Exclusions and actions on object detection.
- In the Stalkerware and other applications section, select check boxes:
- Detect stalkerware
For protection from applications that help criminals gain access to your location, messages, or websites and social networks you visit.
- Detect legitimate apps that intruders can use to damage your computer or personal data
For protection from applications that criminals can use to download malware to your computer or use your computational resources for their nefarious purposes. Kaspersky application does not detect remote administration applications that are considered as trusted.
- Detect stalkerware
If these check boxes are cleared, you may receive notifications about some applications from the table above because they are included in special categories and are processed by default regardless of application settings, for example: RemoteAdmin, PSWTool, Monitor.