ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — No, it’s not TikTok. That short, wacky video clip app has its own cybersecurity concerns.
ToTok is a messaging app that’s become pretty popular in just the past few months. According to the New York Times, millions of people across North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East – where ToTok was made – have downloaded it.
CNET says the app was created in the United Arab Emirates – a country that regularly cracks down on similar messaging apps like Skype and WhatsApp.
But the Times cited “American officials familiar with a classified intelligence assessment,” who said the app is little more than a high-tech spy tool for the UAE’s intelligence services.
Every conversation, location, sounds, images and more – all tracked by agents of an authoritarian government, according to the Times.
“You don’t need to hack people to spy on them if you can get people to willingly download this app to their phone,” security researcher and former NSA hacker told the Times.
In response to the invasive revelation, CNET reported Apple and Google pulled it from their app stores – but that doesn’t stop ToTok from spying on people who already downloaded it.
They will have to delete it.
So, what about TikTok?
That app was made in China, and earlier this month, the U.S. Navy became so concerned by it, it banned TikTok from government-issued devices, according to CNET.
The decision “was made based on cybersecurity threat assessments and is consistent with 10th Fleet efforts to proactively address existing and emerging threats in defense of our networks,” the fleet’s director of public affairs Dave Benham told CNET.
TikTok is owned by a private company, but that’s little comfort to the people responsible for figuring out if an app poses a digital threat.
The U.S. State Department told CNET these companies "have no meaningful ability to tell the Chinese Communist Party 'no.'”
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