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Shayla Nham

Steve Haslam

English 1010

31 October 2020

The Scariness of Spyware

The article “ I know Where You’ve Been: Digital Spying And Divorce In The

Smartphone Age. “ written by Aarti Shahani and Lauren Siverman. This was published on

npr.cog on January 4, 2018. The authors made this article readable for an older audience who can

understand the concept of marriages and divorces. The authors describe the dangers of

technology that helps someone stalk another person. This article is very informative of the

concerns and scariness of getting tracked. The reason why this article was written was to warn

others about the dangers of how easy it is to be tracked and stalked and also the legal actions that

can be taken about the situation. This helps bring awareness to help bring more legal actions to

the victims being followed around without knowing.

The article tells the story of a woman worried that her ex-husband was tracking her. He

knew exactly where she was and where she had been to the exact date and time. It so happened

that her ex-husband had put a GPS tracker device on her car which helped him know where she

was and when. She had tried to file a case against him but this type of case is very hard to take

action for. It is nearly impossible for them to do anything about it. She also had a feeling he had

put a program on her phone, which led her to get it removed and ended up getting a new phone.

After all that she had gone through the lawyers thought she had little to no evidence to get a

trail. They describe how hard it is to have a cased file for these types of cases.
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In “ I Know Where You’ve Been: Digital Spying And Divorce In The Smartphone Age”

Shahani and Silverman were effective by explaining to the readers that technology is advancing

which can lead to stalking programs and how dangerous they can be. Spyware is one of the

major causes that make many people feel unsafe and invaded. The use of spyware shouldn’t be

used without consent. ​They establish pathos at the start by sharing the experience of a woman as

had with her ex-husband. This developed the connection between her and the reader through the

scary and risky journey she had to go through making the readers feel the pain and danger for

those who had similar experiences. The authors also appealed to the use of logos and ethos

throughout the passage. There were many stats to help backup the logic in the article and the

credibility of other officials to help build the trustworthiness of the article.

Shahani and Silverman start off the article by sharing the story of a woman’s experience

with stalking and how it made her scared of technology. This helps build an emotional

connection with the readers as they feel empathy for her. She had to first go through a divorce

then finding out she had been tracked where she went. Her ex husband had put a GPS tracker on

her car to know about her whereabouts. She had felt worried and scared knowing that she had

been tracked. The authors used words such as “ I never was safe. “(Shahani and Silverman) and

“ I'm terrified. I am absolutely terrified. “( Shahani and Silvermand) to help describe the way she

felt. It helped the reader understand that she was so scared and worried. Even the example of her

leaving to stay at a friends house because she needed time away from her husband but she never

truly got away because he still knew where she was. Another example that the author shared was

all the programs and devices that help people stalk and how easy they can be installed onto

phones and elsewhere. This helps build up the fear of the readers and help feel sorrow for the

people affected by this.

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The authors help back up their article with facts of statics in their article by proving how

spyware can have a toll on people and relationships. . They help the readers understand the facts

and logic with everything involved. With the statistics of 1.5% of all adults in America have

been victims of stalking. Which is about 40millon out of the 300million people in America have

been stalked with their knowledge. And they also showed that out of people who have been

divorced or separated that 3.3% of them have been victims of stalking. By using this fact it helps

the readers understand the signafice of how stalking is used very fondly nowadays. With the uses

of logos it helps the reader trust the article they are reading. Shahani and Silverman find that

using logos help the readers understand the significance use of these spyware.

The use of ethos was presented in the article by explaining how the use of spyware can

have no consequences which many people fear of. They shared the facts of if stalking was okay

or not. They interviewed lawyers and police officers on what needs to be done about stalking and

what is needed to file a case on it. Sadly there wasn’t a lot of information that they could share

because spyware is a difficult concept to tackle head on. For example the woman who had found

a tracker on her car had gone to the police station asking what legal action could be taken. The

police officers explain that nothing could be done since the car was in joint custody with her

ex-husband. This story helps back up the fact that it is difficult to build a punishment. In one of

the paragraphs it shares that Randy Kessley, an attorney in Atlanta, explains that he tells his

slintions to not use the spyware and yet they still do it. But he understands why they want to do it

because if it were his life he would have considered it also. This shares that a person advising

others not to do so would have also been tempted in their situation. The use of credible people

such as attorneys and police officers helps the reliability of the article.
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Shahani and Silverman have done a great job of helping the reader understand the

significance of spyware used in life. They help the readers feel many emotions such as fear and

worriedness. They use stories and examples including victims of stalking and all the spyware

that have been developed. The authors used rhetorical devices to help the readers connect and

trust the article they are reading which helps the readers feel that there needs to be action taken

with all the spyware being developed. They took on a topic that not many were aware of and

made an article that has a strong emotional connection to make the readers cautious of others

intentions.

Works Cited

Shahani, A., & Silverman, L. (2018, January 04). I Know Where You've Been: Digital

Spying And Divorce In The Smartphone Age. Retrieved October 31, 2020, from

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/01/04/554564010/i-know-where-you-

ve-been-digital-spying-and-divorce-in-the-smartphone-age

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