'Girls Around Me' Reveals Pathos Of Social Networking: Top 5 Creepy Apps and Software For Phones And PCs

Girls Around Me, the infamous stalker app for the iPhone, has finally been removed from the iTunes app store by its developer after it was criticized as a tool for rapists.

The controversial mobile app, using information gathered from publicly available profiles on Facebook and Foursquare, lets users locate women in a neighborhood on a map and see their pictures. Disturbingly, personal information of the women victims was divulged without their consent and they did not know that their personal information, including images, was being displayed to people they hardly knew.

After facing a barrage of criticism, the app was finally removed from iTunes, but it had been downloaded 70,000 times before it could be yanked off, said the developers.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Foursquare cut off access to the check-in service's data accusing the app makers of breaching terms and conditions by aggregating data and have rendered the app useless.

SMS Services, the maker of Girls Around Me, however, insisted that with this app it is technically impossible to stalk, track or trace a particular person. The company is planning to reintroduce the app, reported PCWorld.

We don't know for sure if this app will appear in the market again. What we do know is that development of technology has put a lot of information at our fingertips, allowing its use in ways that may give rise to distasteful events and violate legal barriers.

Girls Around Me is not the first of its kind. Venue View, Sonar and Banjo, to name a few similar geolocation apps, let users track location. The recent incident with Girls Around Me, however, should be treated as a wake-up call for women around the world to evaluate how personal details given in the social networking sites can end up making you look like a woman posing as a pole dancer in a perpetual state of undress.

There are a few exceptionally creepy apps available for smartphones and PCs. Why only apps, there's also software that erodes into people's privacy.

Check out the list of the five creepiest apps of all time.

Creepy

This app tops in our list of five creepiest apps of all time. Although the developers of this app calls Creepy a geolocation information aggregator, the app essentially lets you track locations of people who have posted their location data and photoshots on Twitter and Flickr.

While the name Creepy is quite apt, the purpose of the app is to raise awareness among the Twitter and Flickr users to be careful about divulging their private information. The developer also posts this disclaimer that: By using this software, you accept that its intention is to raise awareness and to be used as an educational tool. Also it says: Usage of the tool for malicious purposes such as stalking is not endorsed or promoted.

Now it depends on you to decide on the right usage of a tool.

False Flesh

Facebook, according to some experts, is becoming a stalkers' paradise day by day. And now with this False Flesh app, the art of stalking has reached a new level.

The software is a dream for all the photo-flipping stalker types. And the company also promotes the product as software for realistic nude approximations from existing photographs.

With this app, you can tweak photos from social networking sites to show private body parts. The body exposed, however, is not the actual natural body, but users can substitute with prefabricated images and can also customize the body size and type.

The advertisement of the software carries body images of women and thus generates enough interest among the male users. The developers, however, said that women are the bigger buyers of the software.

Breakup Notifier

This creepy app checks status update of Facebook users every ten minutes so that you get to know when your love interest is changing his/her relationship status from committed to single.

The same developers are now launching another service called Crush Notifier, where the user can pick crushes and send anonymous e-mail to them notifying that someone has a crush on them. The sender can always remain anonymous till the time he/she receives an e-mail notifying that the receiver also has a crush back. Weird!

Sugar Sugar (Missing in Action)

Sugar Sugar, which is not available in the App Store now, was developed by the Online Dating systems. Unlike eHarmony, Sugar Sugar was developed to help sugar daddies find sugar babies.

Although the app is no more in use, the website sugarsugar.com is still there to help generous men looking to spoil, and dynamic women looking for financial support with bills, or who just need some excitement in life!

Background Check

A seemingly good app that could weed out the creeps in your life actually comes with a whole lot of worries instead. Background Check, an app designed for the iPhone and Android phone users makes you a personal detective in a jiffy.

The website claims to provide you billions of public records right at your fingertips. And they really do.

Just enter a name or e-mail address and the Background Check App will give you access to that person's criminal history, property records, current contact info and even information about the relatives, neighbors and more!