In the age of information, ignorance is a choice. It might sound harsh, but it is true. Never before has information been more vital than it is now. And there’s an arms race on who can get the most information with the least amount of hassle and panic. Just look at the WhatsApp Pegasus spyware hacks. It was a large-scale covert operation carried out by different governments to hack protestors and human rights activists’ WhatsApp to read their messages. But it is not the only reason why hacking someone’s phone to spy on their instant messages has become necessary.
But what are other reasons?
When children and employees are left alone and unsupervised, parents and businesses want to know what they are up to. Employees and teenagers can mindlessly use instant messengers to share memes or gossip when they should be focused on work and studies because mobile phones are unavoidable at work and school.
There is also the issue of harmful content on social media and messaging apps, especially if the children are too young. They may come across pornography, violent videos, or gambling streams, all of which could be harmful to a young child’s development. Such content and discussions can leave permanent mental scars and traumatize children for life. And since 39% of US teens own a smartphone, it is hard to avoid such content.
Increased messaging app usage might lead to addiction, affecting grades, social life, and sleep. It can also have serious cognitive and emotional consequences such as decreased attention span, tension, anxiety, and depression. There is also the potential for cyberbullying and harassment on social media and messaging apps, which worsens stress, anxiety, and depression. Worse, parents are utterly oblivious of it. Parents cannot accurately estimate how much time their children spend on social media because they use applications on their phones. And many children spend time on the platforms during the school day, away from the prying eyes of adults.
And it’s not much different when it comes to employees. Although pornography, violent videos, or gambling are not harmful to an employee’s mental development, they are detrimental to their performance. And if they are sending messages all day, their productivity decreases significantly. Workplace inefficiency has become so common that escapism through instant messaging has become a nuisance for many employees.
Employees may also share company secrets and trademarked technology or research with the business rivals, causing millions of dollars in funding losses. It gets shared within a few seconds due to how effective instant messaging apps have become.
A jealous partner may suspect their partner of cheating on them and contacting other people through dating apps, or they may feel sexually insecure due to sexting other people via instant messaging apps.
These are just a few reasons why someone might want to read instant messages of another person.
How do Instant Messaging Apps get hacked?
If the user has enabled their messaging apps to automatically sync, all their messages, contacts, settings, and multimedia files get linked to their account. It means that if the user logs in to an instant messaging app on another device, there is a brief window in which you can access the instant messaging profile before it automatically logs off. If you already know the username. You can also use a keylogger and install it on the child’s phone or tablet to extract all the keys typed in and guess the password or read the messages.
If the user has forgotten to log out of their Android 12 device and is still logged in, you can view their app conversation threads while they are AFK (away from the keyboard). If you wish to keep a permanent record of their messages, you can click on their profile picture, note their login and password (if they have it saved on the messaging app), and turn on sync. It will allow you to log in to the messaging app on your device using their credentials. But be warned, if you log in from another device, the account owner gets an email notifying them of suspicious login activity.
When you sign in to your social media account, your browser and the social media server maintain a session for user authentication. The session information gets saved in the browser’s cookie files. The hacker steals the cookies and then uses session hijacking to access the victim’s account. It is known as session hijacking and is the act of stealing a session.
It is similar to the strategy that can be used to hack WhatsApp. If a user turns on Web WhatsApp via a QR code, they can use WhatsApp services from within their web browser. A third party could use cookies saved during this session, extract them and add them to their browser. It will allow them to read another person’s WhatsApp messages.
A hacker may use a man-in-the-middle approach to covertly relay and possibly influence communication between the server and the victim, both believing they are interacting directly. The hacker makes separate connections with the victims and transfers messages between them, creating the illusion that they are conversing directly with each other through a private connection when, in fact, the hacker controls the entire network.
However, all these methods are somewhat complex and risky for reading instant messages. What if I told you there’s a more straightforward approach, with no danger or strings attached? Apps for monitoring social media can be the answer.
How Remote Monitoring Apps Prove Useful?
You can use a remote monitoring program to read instant messaging app chats, track browsing history, access emails, view call logs, monitor location history, and view time spent on an app. Did I mention that all of these features work in complete stealth mode? As a result, the owner will be unaware that they are getting tracked.
XNSPY is one of the apps for monitoring social media on Android 12 that includes all of these capabilities and more. Users only need to install the app on the device they wish to spy on, log in to their account, access email without a password, and use XNSPY’s internet history monitoring software. To monitor users’ instant messaging apps, log in to your dashboard account, navigate to the features menu bar on the left panel and go to Messenger. Once there, select WhatsApp to read sent and received messages on WhatsApp. The app also allows you to view the timestamps for each message. Note that to spy on WhatsApp using an Android 12 device, you need to root it first.
In the age of information, it is necessary to safeguard oneself from information overloading. And remote monitoring apps can help achieve it.
