iCamCU - Mobile Phone Surveillance Software

Available now
19th April 2006

We don't usually cover software at Mobile Gazette, but a recent release for Symbian Series 60 handsets caught our eye. An application with the somewhat cheesy name of iCamCU claims to be able to turn a Symbian smartphone into a spy camera.

In principle, the operation of iCamCU seems to be pretty simple. You download a piece of software onto your smartphone that waits for a specially formatted SMS message - it then takes a snapshot from the camera and sends it back via MMS.

In addition to stills photos, iCamCU can also send video and audio clips to an MMS capable phone. Only the remote phone needs to be a Symbian Series 60 device, it can be interrogated with pretty much any MMS capable handset. Access to the remote Symbian phone can be controlled through caller groups. It is also possible to run the iCamCU software in what amounts to a "stealth mode" on the remote handset.

It's a neat bit of software, but of course there are legal and ethical implications to using software such as iCamCU. Assuming that you are legally allowed to do this any are happy with the ethical issues, then the application seems to have a lot going for it, especially if you're familiar with texting. It has several advantages over wireless ethernet based cameras too.. iCamCU is potentially easier to set up and it doesn't require a WiFi network.

What about cost? Well, at the moment iCamCU is priced at just under £40 in the UK (€60 approx). Of course you'll need a Symbian Series 60 smartphone to use too, and these can be fairly expensive - a Nokia N70 is about £340/€490 SIM free although iCamCU also works with the much cheaper Nokia 3230 (at about £175/€250). And of course there's the small matter of leaving a high-end phone lying around where it can be spotted or stolen.. it might be a bit difficult to nonchalantly leave a smartphone propped up at exactly the right angle.

The makes of iCamCU say that it will work with the Nokia 3230, 6620, 6260, 6630, 6670, 6680, 6681, 6682,  7610 and N70 plus the Panasonic X700 and X700 and Samsung D720. You can see more details of the product here.

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