Do you have suspicions about your children or teens? Do you think they might be up to something mischievous, dangerous or even something criminal? Do you have suspicions about your co-workers? Do you think they’re slacking off or, even worse, mishandling confidential information? If you have suspicions, Mobile Spy claims to have answers. This multi-faceted spy tool lets you monitor text messages, GPS locations, call details, photos and social media activity. It promises a lot of power with a simple, intuitive operation.

We tried out Mobile Spy ourselves. Did it turn us into super-sleuths, or was our cover blown?

About Mobile-Spy.com

Mobile Spy is a program you place on a smart device which lets you secretly view pretty much everything which goes on with that device. You can:

• View all SMS text messages
• View all WhatsApp and iMessage correspondence
• View GPS location at any time
• View all Facebook and Twitter messages
• View any photos and videos on the phone
• View other phone information such as memos, contacts and emails
• Block specific apps (of your choosing) on the phone

You can even view the phone or tablet’s screen in real time with the unique LIVE Control Panel. The app works on iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile and practically everything else. It’s fully compatible with T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and most other major carriers.

All of the information from the device is uploaded to your Mobile Spy account, which you can access from any computer. The data isn’t taken from the device’s databases, meaning information is still sent even if the user deletes their usage histories. In addition to being able to see basically everything the device does, Mobile Spy also lets you use the device itself for additional surveillance.

1. Record Surroundings – You can access the microphone on the device and record the ambient sounds in the room. You set the record length, and can access the recording virtually as soon as it’s finished via the Mobile Spy account.

Obviously, how well this works depends on a lot of factors beyond your control. If the phone is in a pocket, or in a place with a lot of background noise, you might not be able to hear much. But the feature works fine. The user will have no idea his or her phone is recording.

2. Stealth Camera – Along those same lines, you can capture still photographs from the phone’s camera. While you might end up with more shots of the inside of a pocket than you’d like, the feature still works great. Like the audio recording, the user won’t be aware when a picture is being taken.

To install Mobile Spy, you need access to the smartphone or tablet for about a half hour. Once installed, the program is virtually impossible to detect. From there, everything can be managed remotely from your Mobile Spy Account. You can buy additional licenses if you want to monitor additional devices; everything can be easily controlled from your one account.

Who is Mobile Spy For?

Mobile Spy is geared towards two different users: Families and Companies.

The program is designed for parents to monitor their children’s smartphone and tablet use. In such instances, it’s typically the parent who is paying for the child’s cell phone. Many parents feel perfectly fine installing the device without their child’s knowledge, since the ultimate goal of the program is to keep your child safe.

The program is also designed for business owners or managers to monitor their employee’s use of smartphones and tablets. If the phone is paid for by the company, there are typically no legal problems with using the program in this manner.

Which brings us to another use for the program we couldn’t help but notice: It can effectively be used to monitor a spouse or other loved one. We’ll leave it up to the user to determine the ethics of this, but it does seem worth mentioning as a potential user base, even though the Mobile Spy site pointedly omits mentioning this group.

Before you use Mobile Spy, you should check the laws in your area concerning its use. While the product itself is for sale to anyone, you want to make sure it’s legal to use it for whatever purpose you have in mind.

Mobile Spy Pricing

There are two pricing tiers, the Basic and the Premium. Both have the general monitoring features, such as SMS monitoring and email monitoring, but the Premium has quite a few additional features such as:

• The LIVE Control Panel, which allows for real-time updates
• Ability to view the screen of the device in real time.
• Ability to view instant GPS location of the device
• Stealth Camera
• Record Surroundings
• Phone Support

In our opinion, the features found in the Premium package are pretty important to the overall product. The Stealth Camera and Record Surroundings feature seems especially significant, especially if you’re monitoring your teenagers for misbehavior. We feel that, for many people, the increased cost of the Premium package is well worth it.

Three months of Basic costs $49.97, six months costs $69.97 and one year costs $99.97. For Premium, three months costs $89.97, six months costs $89.99 and one year costs $139.99

Criticism of Mobile Spy

We didn’t find too many complaints about Mobile Spy. While, obviously, people who were caught doing something they shouldn’t have been doing might not like Mobile Spy, those who installed the product generally reported great success. We weren’t surprised – The Wall Street Journal credits Mobile Spy as being the first on the market with this type of spying software.

There is an issue with the iPhone, but it’s really more of an iPhone issue than a Mobile Spy issue. In order for the program to work on an iPhone, that phone must be jailbroken. This does void the iPhone warranty. However, many people have no problem jailbreaking their phone for a variety of reasons. Also, no evidence of the jailbreak will be available on iTunes or iCloud, so the secrecy of the installed program still remains.

For other devices, such as Android or Blackberry, this isn’t an issue. For Android devices, however, the device must be rooted if you want to track Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype and Gmail. Rooting is when a user is allowed permission for privileged control. Instructions for this are included with the software, or otherwise available online.

Customer Support

We found support to be top-notch. Both Basic and Premium offer 24/7 live chat support. They also both offer the option to submit an online support ticket. All support is US-based, too.

Premium members have the option of phone support, too. Since Premium includes many useful features, as we detailed above, this phone support is really just a nice bonus. There are also many useful FAQ’s on the Mobile Spy site.

Final Thoughts

It’s your phone, and you have a right to know what people are doing with it. It’s a great way to ensure your children or teens are making smart decisions. It’s also a great way to ensure your employees aren’t using their company-provided smartphones or computers for non-official use. You can also make sure your company secrets remain confidential. The only downside is if you want to install the device secretly you’ll need roughly 30 minutes of uninterrupted access to the phone. That’s pretty standard for this type of software, however.

Mobile Spy is powerful, easy to use and affordably priced. We found their support to be among the best in the business, too. If you’re in the market for spy software, Mobile Spy is a powerful tool that’ll get the job done.