Use, chat ToTok spy on behalf of the Emirates

The ToTok application, a new chat with tens of millions of users worldwide, would actually be a spying tool in the hands of the United Arab Emirates government. To say it, according to reports from the New York Times, is US intelligence. Apple and Google have removed ToTok from their respective app stores for iPhones and Android devices, a choice that however the company, on its website, attributes to a "temporary technical problem".

ToTok - which has a name similar to the Chinese social TikTok with which it has no ties - "is used by the United Arab Emirates government to track every conversation, movement, relationship, appointment, sound and image of who installed the app", which "It has access to a microphone, camera, calendar and other data on the smartphone," writes the New York newspaper.

The company behind ToTok, Breej Holding, is most likely a facade company affiliated with DarkMatter, a cyberintelligence and hacking reality based in Abu Dhabi. Emirati intelligence officers, former employees of the American National Security Agency, and former Israeli military intelligence agents are working on it. DarkMatter, the newspaper said, would be under investigation by the FBI for alleged cybercrimes.

In a note on its website, ToTok does not go into the merits of the allegations. The post is a thank you to the "tens of millions of users in hundreds of countries" obtained "in a few months", and a reassurance on the standards adopted to protect user data. In the Google and Apple app stores "ToTok is temporarily unavailable due to a technical problem", reads the note, which explains that the Android app is downloadable on the ToTok website and from the app stores of Asian manufacturers of Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo phones. (ANSA).