The well-known and very popular messaging application ToTok has been removed from the App Store by Apple. The reason for this step is allegations of espionage.
The messaging application ToTok was developed by the United Arab Emirates and has already found a large audience in the Middle East. However, users in Europe and the USA have also actively used the app. However, it has now become known that the chat application is a spy tool. For this reason, both Apple and Google have removed the application from the App Store and Play Store respectively. As the New York Times reports, all user data was passed directly to the government of the United Arab Emirates. The success of the app was inevitable, as the government of the United Arab Emirates has banned other services such as Skype, WhatsApp and more. But the app has also been accepted and used in other parts of the world. The New York Times report states:
The ToTok service is actually a spying tool, according to American officials familiar with a confidential intelligence assessment and a New York Times investigation into the app and its developers. It is used by the United Arab Emirates government to track every conversation, move, relationship, appointment, sound and image of those who install it on their phones. Launched just a few months ago, ToTok has been downloaded millions of times from Apple and Google's app stores by users from the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. While the majority of users are in the Emirates, ToTok has risen to become one of the most downloaded social apps in the United States in the past week, according to App Ranking and App Annie, a research firm.
New York Times
Various investigations and an analysis have revealed that "Breej Holding" – the company behind ToTok – is a shell company linked to a hacking firm in Abu Dhabi. The connection extends to the Emirati intelligence service and beyond.
A Middle East digital security expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss powerful hacking tools, said senior Emirati officials told him that ToTok was indeed an app designed to track its users in the Emirates and beyond.
New York Times
Since the app does not have end-to-end encryption, all messages could be read completely. (Photo by Creative Family / Bigstockphoto)
