FOI 15344-25 - Suspected Tracking & Spyware

Request

Q1) For the past 10 years, please share the number of reports received by the police where a victim suspects hidden spyware, AKA stalkerware, has been installed on their device by someone else, in order to track their location or monitor their activity.

Please include search results for any of the following phrases:
'stalkerware', ‘spyware’, ‘mSpy’, and ‘tracking app’.

a) 2015
b) 2016
c) 2017
d) 2018
e) 2019
f) 2020
g) 2021
h) 2022
i) 2023
j) 2024
k) 2025 – latest available data

Q2) Of the reports in Q1, how many of the victims were aged under 25?
a) 2015
b) 2016
c) 2017
d) 2018
e) 2019
f) 2020
g) 2021
h) 2022
i) 2023
j) 2024

Response:

Search between January 2015 and 8th August 2025 for all occurrences using a word search for 'Stalkerware', 'Spyware', 'mSpy' and 'Tracking app', and secondly where the victim is under the age of 25.
A manual review was undertaken to filter out irrelevant results, for example where someone had installed a tracking app in their own device or vehicle.

As with any keyword search, the search will only return exact matches within the Incident Description or Crime MO. This does not account for differences in terminology and/or spelling used. Keyword searches are problematic and in no way provide accurate results or figures. If the selected key words have not been mentioned the data will not be returned. Vice versa, if the key words have been mentioned in an unrelated context irrelevant data will be collected.

Due to a systems change, data from before March 2016 may be incomplete.

Question 1:
a) 2015 – 0
b) 2016 – 0
c) 2017 – 0
d) 2018 – 1
e) 2019 – 0
f) 2020 – 1
g) 2021 – 5
h) 2022 – 4
i) 2023 – 1
j) 2024 – 1
k) 2025 – 2

Question 2:
a) 2015 – 0
b) 2016 – 0
c) 2017 – 0
d) 2018 – 0
e) 2019 – 0
f) 2020 – 0
g) 2021 – 0
h) 2022 – 0
i) 2023 – 1
j) 2024 – 0

The numerical data presented in this response is an un-audited snapshot of un-published data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.

Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom of Information responses.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.

If you decide to write an article/use the enclosed data, we ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.