Cocospy, a mobile stalkerware application sharing source code with sibling applications Spyic and Spyzie, suffered a data breach disclosed publicly on February 20, 2025 by TechCrunch. The breach was enabled by a security vulnerability shared across all three sibling applications that allowed any party to access the personal data exfiltrated from any device with the applications installed and to retrieve the email addresses of customers who had signed up to plant the spyware. The vulnerability was so trivial to exploit that TechCrunch and the involved security researcher declined to publish details to prevent further exploitation. The researcher used the vulnerability to scrape email addresses from all three applications and provided the dataset to Have I Been Pwned. Cocospy specifically was indexed on February 20, 2025.

The breach affected approximately 1.81 million unique Cocospy customer email addresses based on records indexed by Have I Been Pwned, alongside approximately 880,167 Spyic customer emails (with a deduplicated combined Cocospy and Spyic count of 2.65 million unique addresses) and approximately 518,643 Spyzie customer emails (for a combined trio total of approximately 3.2 million customer emails). Compromised customer fields were limited to email addresses for purposes of HIBP indexing, but the underlying vulnerability also enabled unauthorized access to captured surveillance data including messages, photos, call logs, and real-time location data from monitored devices. Earliest Spyzie iPhone surveillance records dated back to early 2020.

For surveillance targets and customers alike, the practical risk profile is exceptionally severe and varies between the two populations. For surveillance targets (the people whose devices were being monitored), the breach exposed live and historical device data captured by the spyware, with the U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) and the Coalition Against Stalkerware providing resources for individuals who suspect they may have been monitored. Android users can detect Cocospy, Spyic, and Spyzie installations by entering ✱✱001✱✱ on the Android phone dialer and pressing call, which exploits a built-in backdoor feature to reveal the otherwise-hidden application (which appears as a generic-looking 'System Service' app); victims should establish a safety plan before removal because disabling the application may alert the person who installed it. For iPhone and iPad users, the spyware works by exploiting the victim's Apple Account credentials to access iCloud-stored data, and victims should ensure two-factor authentication on their Apple Account and review and remove unrecognized devices from their account. For customers, inclusion in the dataset confirms participation in a stalkerware operation that has now ceased operation, with potential employment, relationship, and legal consequences depending on the jurisdiction and the consent status of the surveillance target.

Mobile spyware platforms collect customer records, target-device identifiers, monitoring settings, and exfiltrated activity data tied to covert surveillance of phones.

Cocospy and its sibling stalkerware applications Spyic and Spyzie were taken offline in approximately May 2025 following the February 2025 disclosure of the shared security vulnerability. The Cocospy, Spyic, and Spyzie websites disappeared, the applications stopped functioning, and the operators' Amazon Web Services cloud storage was deleted. TechCrunch reported that the shutdown likely reflects an attempt to escape legal and reputational fallout rather than a genuine remediation. Operators of the three applications did not respond to TechCrunch requests for comment and have not publicly acknowledged the breach or the shutdown. The case has been counted by TechCrunch as among the 25 known stalkerware operations that have been hacked or otherwise exposed sensitive data since 2017, with at least 10 of those operations including Cocospy shutting down in the wake of breach disclosure.