The ToTok app disappears because they discover that it was used to spy

Not everything is what it seems, said an old song. And that is exactly what has happened with ToTok, an Emirati messaging app to chat (downloaded on millions of phones) that was used to spy on users. The app was presented in the Google Play and App Store as an easy way to chat by video, messages or images. It is important to clarify that this app, in its country of origin, was very important as tools such as Skype or WhatsApp were prohibited.

However, ToTok is a spy app and this New York Times article reveals it. The ToTok app was used by the United Arab Emirates government to track every conversation, movement, relationship, quote, sound, and image of whoever installed it on their phone .

ToTok had become a very popular app on Android and iPhone

ToTok had only been on the market for a few months but already had millions of downloads on both Google Play and the App Store, both in the Middle East and in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. Although most of the users were from the Emirates, ToTok achieved great fame in the United States. Governments are looking for more and more sophisticated methods to spy on and this was one of them.

We cannot ignore that the nations of the Persian Gulf have tried to hack their rivals through private companies, but apps like ToTok do it much faster, since it would be the user who would openly give their data.There is every indication that the developer of this app is affiliated with DarkMatter, a hacking company based in Abu Dhabi This company, Dark Matter, was already under investigation by the FBI for a while. In fact, Pax AI, the developer company, operated in the same building as the latter.

In political matters this fact is really serious

The United Arab Emirates is the United States' closest Middle Eastern allies, used as a bulwark against Iran. Despite the fact that they announce themselves as a modern nation, we cannot ignore the fact that there, freedom as such, is not the same as in other Western nations. At the moment we have no response from the developer company or any kind of communication but the application has been removed from the Android and iPhone application stores last week.

Anyone who has the app installed should know that they can still use it, because if the APK is installed everyone will be able to continue making video calls from it.However, everything seems to indicate that it is best to remove it from the phone if you have it, as it is being used to spy on you. The app is based on the famous Chinese app YeeCall, with slight customization and adaptation for both English and Arabic speaking audiences.

The app also tracks location and contacts

ToTok, per NYT reports, could have been created to track what UAE citizens are doing both inside and outside the country. In fact, this app tracks users' location and contacts The excuse for doing this is that it uses location to predict the weather and search for contacts to connect to friends. You also have access to the phone's microphones and other sensors.

The app does not encrypt conversations and in its privacy policy it ensures that users' personal data can be shared with their group of companies.This app makes us think about the number of times that users give up their privacy in exchange for installing certain applications. Well, we cannot deny that Facebook uses our data in a massive way and sometimes, in a way that we cannot control.

Now everything makes sense behind your marketing project. The ToTok app had been running strong campaigns through brands like Huawei and even advertising itself as a free alternative to another very popular app in this area, called Botim. The app has become so popular that it is one of the top 50 free apps in Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, India, Sweden and a few other countries. You will be shocked to learn that the person running this project has previously worked with the Pentagon and spy agencies in the United States.

A movie plot, but very real

It seems like a movie plot that shows us that a war is being waged in the world and it has little or nothing to do with energy.Where we live today is a land where information is worth its weight in gold and scandals like these remind us that everyone wants to control it. The one who is able to handle more information will surely become the most powerful in the world. Now do you understand why Artificial Intelligence advances so quickly in search of an efficient way to process big data?