About Spytrap
Last updated: 9 August 2026
The short version: Spytrap is an independent Android app built by one developer, Wassef Hassine. It logs every time an app uses your camera or microphone. It has no company behind it, no investors, no cloud, and no data collection.
Why it exists
Android 12 added a green indicator that appears when an app uses your camera or microphone. It's a genuine improvement, and it's also gone in about a second. There's no record. If something reached for your microphone while you were asleep, the dot appeared to an empty room.
That struck me as the wrong way round. The moment you'd most want to know is exactly the moment you aren't looking at your screen. So Spytrap keeps the receipt: which app, what time, how long, and whether the phone was locked.
Who builds it
My name is Wassef Hassine. I'm an independent developer and Spytrap is my own project — there's no team, no company structure, and no outside funding. The interface is built in Flutter; the detection runs in a native Android service that watches the camera and microphone at system level.
You can reach me directly at hassinewassef@gmail.com. Bug reports and disagreements are both welcome.
The principle behind it
A privacy app that phones home is a contradiction. So Spytrap doesn't. There is no account, no sign-up, no analytics, no advertising SDK and no server to send anything to. Every event stays in a database on your own phone.
This is verifiable rather than something you have to take on faith: Google Play's Data Safety section, which is Google's disclosure and not mine, lists no data collected and no data shared with third parties.
It's also worth being precise about what the app can see. Spytrap detects that a sensor was activated and by which app. It has no access to your photos, your video, or your audio, and it never asks for it.
What it doesn't do
- It doesn't scan for viruses or malware — it watches behaviour, not code.
- It doesn't claim to catch everything. Some manufacturers restrict the APIs it relies on, and aggressive battery managers can pause background services. When that leaves a gap in your log, Spytrap tells you rather than pretending the gap isn't there.
- It doesn't accuse an app it can't identify. Where Android won't say which process triggered a sensor, Spytrap shows you a ranked list of possible candidates instead of naming one at random.
Honesty about accuracy
Attribution on Android is genuinely hard. Several detection paths run in parallel because no single one works on every device, and on some manufacturer skins the most precise path is unavailable entirely. Where certainty isn't possible, the app says so. For a tool whose only product is trust, a confident wrong answer is worse than an honest uncertain one.