Why these apps keep showing up in abuse cases
Researchers have a name for this category: “dual-use” apps — tools “designed for some legitimate use case(s), but can also be repurposed by an abuser for IPS because their functionality enables another person remote access to a device’s sensors or data, without the user of the device’s knowledge.” The paper that coined the term used family-tracking and “Find My Friends”-style apps as its examples, with parental-control software named among the broader categories it studied (Chatterjee et al., IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy). Cornell Tech’s Clinic to End Tech Abuse, which directly assists intimate partner violence survivors, told the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women these apps “can have a legitimate purpose, but that an abuser could misuse to monitor a victim,” and recommended states “ban abusers’ misuse of applications that can have legitimate purposes but can also be used for stalking or other harms” (CETA submission to OHCHR).
A 2022 global study classified store metadata across 15 languages on Google Play, labeling 854 dual-use apps (est. 3,988 across the store), with location tracking the most common capability; parental-control apps were named alongside family-locator, anti-theft, and employee-monitoring apps — the common thread being ongoing, often invisible, access to another person’s device (Almansoori et al., Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies). Mainstream security tools largely miss this category: the best-performing tool in one study, an anti-spyware app, flagged only 47 percent of on-store dual-use apps, while most top-brand anti-virus tools flagged under 3 percent — these apps aren’t malware, they’re doing what they’re built to do (Chatterjee et al.).
What these apps can legitimately do
The capabilities aren’t secret — they’re the selling point. Reading vendors’ own documentation:
- Location, live and historical. Family Link lets a parent “check the location of your child’s Android or compatible Fitbit device” (Google Family Link Help). Life360 shows real-time location plus arrival/departure alerts and history for members who share them (eSafety Commissioner, Australia). Bark offers “live GPS, location alerts, and check-in features” (Bark).
- Screen time, app, and content control. Screen Time sets per-app or per-category time limits, schedules downtime, requires a passcode to change settings, and blocks explicit content by default for minors (Apple Support). Family Link approves or blocks app downloads, sets daily limits, and restricts mature content on Google Play (Google Family Link Help). Bark can shut off internet access on a schedule and block whole content categories (Bark).
- Message and social-media visibility. This is where the tools diverge most from ordinary controls. Bark monitors a child’s social media, texts, photos, and videos across phones, tablets, and computers — on iOS, texts, photos, videos, WhatsApp, and Kik — flagging cyberbullying or predatory contact rather than forwarding every message (Bark). Apple’s Communication Safety separately warns about nude images in Messages for accounts under 18 (Apple Support).
Every one of those capabilities is also, precisely, what a controlling partner wants.
Signals one may be on your phone as an adult
Find any of this on your own phone as an adult, and it isn’t a parenting tool anymore — it’s monitoring. What to check:
- An account you didn’t set up, tracking you. Life360 requires an existing member to share a Circle invite code before someone new can join (Life360 Help Center) — did you accept one?
- Unfamiliar apps, accessibility permissions, or device admin access. Walk through your installed apps and the Accessibility and Device admin lists. The Android lock-down guide and iPhone lock-down guide show exactly where to look.
- A configuration profile or MDM enrollment you didn’t set up. A common way to push restrictions onto a personal iPhone without a separate app.
- Screen Time or Family Link showing someone else in control. On iPhone, open Settings → your name → Family and check who’s listed under Parents/Guardians (Apple Support). On Android, supervision generally needs parental approval to stop, though a child can request to end it starting around age 13 (Google Family Link Help) — an adult who doesn’t recognize a supervising account should treat that as a signal worth acting on.
Don’t act on instinct. Removing a monitoring app can alert whoever installed it and destroy evidence — read Safety first before changing anything. For a broader picture of monitoring software, see what is stalkerware.
The custody gray zone
The messiest version of this isn’t a stranger’s app on a stranger’s phone — it’s a parent’s app on their own child’s phone, in shared custody. There’s no categorical legal answer here: laws on intercepting a child’s communications vary by state, custody orders can explicitly restrict or require monitoring, and who legally controls the device or account matters. Involve a family lawyer or a domestic-violence advocate first, especially where there’s any history of abuse between the parents. Separately, a child’s phone travels between two households, and its location history and message logs can reveal as much about the other parent — pickup locations, who else is present, routines at the other home — as about the child.
Courts increasingly order separated parents to use co-parenting or supervised-visitation apps to document custody compliance, and NNEDV’s Safety Net Project publishes guidance for judges evaluating them: “personal information shared through the app — such as schedules, contact information, or details about the child’s activities — can be misused to stalk, harass, manipulate, and exert power and control over the survivor,” and apps requiring location to stay on constantly conflict with standard survivor-safety advice to disable GPS when it isn’t needed (NNEDV Safety Net Project, Considerations for Judges and Supervised Visitation Providers: Co-Parenting and Visitation Apps). It also warns that stalkerware on a parent’s phone could expose everything entered into a co-parenting app, including passwords — a tool aimed at a child’s safety is also, unavoidably, a window into the other parent’s life.
What legitimate use actually looks like
Set against the abuse cases, the honest baseline for age-appropriate, consensual parental monitoring is proportionate, not absolute: a parent who is the account holder, using an app whose data collection matches the child’s age and the actual safety need, not the app’s fullest feature set. Pediatric guidance favors more autonomy as kids age — the American Academy of Pediatrics notes closer monitoring is better supported for younger children, while for teens “autonomy-granting, active monitoring” tracks with better outcomes than controlling, restrictive monitoring (American Academy of Pediatrics). That same tracking, message visibility, or app-blocking aimed at an adult without their knowledge isn’t a parenting tool — it’s the same capability researchers have spent years cataloguing under a different name.