Washington (AFP)
The mobile messaging application ToTok, developed by a company in the United Arab Emirates and which has recently become popular in the Middle East and elsewhere, was deleted from the application stores of Google and Apple after suspicion of spying of users.
Apple and Google confirmed to AFP on Monday that they have deleted the application, whose name closely resembles the much more popular Chinese application TikTok, launched in 2017.
Apple has indicated that ToTok will no longer be downloadable while the firm is investigating the situation. People who have already installed ToTok on their smartphones can continue to use it.
The New York Times published an investigation accusing the UAE intelligence services of having direct access to video messages and conversations exchanged on ToTok, as well as geolocation data, the contact list, cameras, microphones and calendar of the phone.
The American newspaper draws on American intelligence sources and cybersecurity experts.
ToTok, launched this year, is developed by "Breej Holding", which is in reality a front company for DarkMatter, a cyber intelligence and hacking firm linked to the UAE government, according to the Times. A US intelligence report quoted by the Times would also link ToTok to Pax AI, an artificial intelligence company headquartered in the same building as the UAE listening agency in Abu Dhabi.
In a message published on Monday on its website to respond to "rumors", ToTok does not deny any of these accusations, and essentially talks about its recent success. The company claims to comply with "local and international legal obligations" in the area of privacy, without saying which ones.
ToTok has confirmed that it is no longer available on the Apple Store and the Google Play Store, but attributes the unavailability to "a technical problem".
Google contradicted this assertion, saying to AFP: "We can confirm that we have deleted the app for a rules problem".
Patrick Wardle, former hacker of the American spy agency National Security Agency (NSA) interviewed by the Times, wrote on a blog that the "genius" of ToTok seemed to be that the application operated legitimately, since users themselves opened the doors of their most personal content to them, without being aware that they were then potentially exploited by an intelligence service.
© 2019 AFP