Apple removed an app that promoted stalking on Instagram.
James Martin/CNET
Apple has removed the Like Patrol app from its App Store, following Instagram’s delivery of a cease-and-desist letter to the developers for violating its policies against data collection. Like Patrol enabled people to spy on others and keep constant surveillance of their social media activities.
Like Patrol wanted to make creeping on Instagram easier than ever, setting up a service that let paying subscribers get notifications anytime someone they followed commented on or liked a photo. It targeted people in relationships, telling them they could use it to keep tabs on whoever their partners were communicating with on Instagram.
Instagram sent its cease-and-desist letter in late October. On Saturday, Apple removed Like Patrol from the App Store and said the app violated its guidelines. Like Patrol didn’t respond to a request for comment on Monday.
The app first showed up in Apple’s store in July. It doesn’t appear in Google Play Store for Android devices.
The app charges people up to $80 a year and had fewer than 300 people signed up in October, app founder Sergio Luis Quintero said last last month in an email to CNET.
The app isn’t classified as stalkerware, which abusive partners use to keep track of private information like location data, call logs, text messages and contacts. Still, security experts found that Like Patrol was encouraging stalking behavior by monitoring people’s activities on social media.
Quintero described his app as Instagram’s “Following Tab on steroids,” enhancing a tool that the social network killed off in early October. Like Patrol would deliver notifications by gender, letting subscribers know if the people they followed interacted with posts from men or women and claimed to have an algorithm to detect if they were posts from attractive people.
It did this by scraping people’s public profiles for data — a practice that directly violates Instagram’s policies. Four days after Instagram sent Like Patrol the cease-and-desist letter, Quintero said that his company intended to fight it.
It’s unclear if he also intends to fight Apple after the app’s removal.