Phone surveillance

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Phone surveillance is the act of performing surveillance on phone conversations, location tracking, and data monitoring of a phone. Before the era of mobile phones, these used to refer to the tapping of phone lines via a method called wiretapping. Wiretapping has now been replaced by software that monitors the cell phones of users.

While mobile phone surveillance has been carried out by large organizations for a long time (e.g., to find clues of illegal activities), more and more of such surveillance is now carried out by individuals for personal reasons. For example, a parent may become a "text spy" to monitor a child's texting activity. This brings in the moral, ethical and legal question of who owns people's privacy.