How DeSpy works
DeSpy is a desktop app for Windows and macOS. It connects to your phone over a USB cable and analyzes it right there, on your own computer. No cloud. No account. Nothing is ever uploaded — the evidence stays where it belongs: with you.
1 The extraction process
Extraction is the moment DeSpy reads evidence from your phone. It happens over a USB cable, into a folder on your own computer — and you decide, explicitly, how deep it goes before anything runs.
Phones don't hand over their data to just anyone — that's a good thing. DeSpy's guided setup walks you through preparing your device step by step, in plain language, before the scan begins.
The wizard covers everything Apple requires before a computer may read the device:
Android asks for a developer handshake before a computer may talk to it. The wizard guides you through:
There is no hidden “collect everything” mode. Every scan runs under an explicit profile that you pick, and each profile states up front what it will and won't touch.
Quick diagnostics with no device backup created and no personal media copied. The lightest possible footprint — signals only.
With your explicit consent, DeSpy makes a local backup of the device on your computer and performs deep extraction against it.
A fast look using standard, non-root access — installed apps, settings, and monitoring-capable configurations.
Expanded collection for a thorough security review — without your photos, videos, audio, or documents. Depth where it matters, privacy where it counts.
The most complete acquisition, offered only after you explicitly opt in to including personal files. It is never selected for you.
Personal media is off by default — on every platform. DeSpy never copies photos, videos, audio, or documents unless you deliberately choose a full-preservation scan and confirm that choice. The recommended profiles do a deep security review without ever touching them.
Every artifact the scan collects makes exactly one trip: down the cable, into a vault on your computer, and out again only as your report. Here is the entire journey.
Every artifact the scan collects is stored in a DeSpy Evidence folder on your own computer. You can see it, copy it, back it up, or delete it — it's an ordinary folder, and it's entirely yours.
Each artifact is hashed with SHA-256 at acquisition. If a single byte changes later, the fingerprint no longer matches — so you, or any expert you share it with, can prove the evidence is intact.
Under the hood, DeSpy orchestrates industry-standard, open extraction tooling — including the same Mobile Verification Toolkit indicators used by human-rights forensics labs — all coordinated locally on your machine. Proven methods, without the lab coat, and without the lab's servers.
2 The reporting process
A pile of extracted files answers nothing. DeSpy turns the evidence vault into a report a person can actually use — and shows its work at every step.
The collected artifacts — installed apps, permissions, settings, and system records — are parsed into structured facts, locally.
The facts are checked against a catalog of known stalkerware and against monitoring-capable configurations: accessibility services, notification listeners, device administrators, and sideloading. Deterministic rules, not black-box guesses — the same input always produces the same finding.
Each app gets a risk rating with a plain-English explanation of exactly which behaviors or permissions earned it.
Findings roll up into an overall 0–100 risk score with plain-language tiers, so you can see at a glance how much attention the results deserve.
You get a consumer-friendly PDF report plus machine-readable evidence files — ready to keep, or to hand to an expert, advocate, or attorney.
A scary red label with no context helps nobody. Each finding in a DeSpy report carries five things:
Recommended next steps always lead with safety. Where a removal could tip off the person doing the monitoring, the report says so before it tells you how to remove anything.
The DeSpy honesty principle
A scan that finds nothing is not proof that you're safe. Your report states exactly what was checked and what wasn't — and it never turns “no match” into “your phone is clean.”
Why we insist on this — What a scan can and can't tell you.
If you supply a Google export of your own account data, DeSpy can correlate account-side signals with what it found on the device: which devices are signed in to your account, third-party access to your mail, and location sharing. Like everything else, the export is analyzed locally and never leaves your computer.
3 Built-in privacy controls
A tool people reach for in their most vulnerable moment has to be beyond suspicion. These protections aren't settings you have to find — they're how DeSpy is built.
Extraction, detection, scoring, and reporting all run on your computer. There is no cloud upload — ever — and DeSpy works offline once installed.
No name, no email, no sign-in. Registration stores only a one-way device hash — a fingerprint that can't be reversed into anything about you.
Photos, videos, audio, and documents are never collected unless you make the explicit opt-in choice. The default is always “leave my personal files alone.”
Before anything runs, the scan explains what it is about to collect from the phone. Nothing is touched until you've seen the list and agreed to it.
SHA-256 hashing at acquisition seals every artifact, and reports preserve their evidence references — so findings stay verifiable long after the scan.
Removing stalkerware can alert the person monitoring you. That's why reports place safety warnings before removal steps. Read more in Safety first.
Phone numbers are masked in report content, and DeSpy's own logs are privacy-redacted and stay local. Even the diagnostics respect your privacy — and never upload.
DeSpy's job is evidence; understanding is yours to keep. These companions go deeper:
Plain-language guides to stalkerware, tracking, app permissions, advertising IDs, and staying safe while you investigate.
Browse the guides →Who trades in personal data, what they hold, and how to opt out — a public registry maintained alongside DeSpy.
Open the directory →DeSpy is in private beta. Apply to test it, run a scan on your own terms, and get a report that respects both your intelligence and your privacy.
