ToTok is back on Google Play. The messaging app became available for download again as of Saturday, according to a tweet from the company, a few weeks after it vanished from both Google’s and Apple’s stores amid claims that it spied for the United Arab Emirates.
A “what’s new” note on the app’s Play page lists several updates, among them changes to how the app asks for user data and how it syncs contact lists. Google did not say why the app was reinstated. A spokesperson told CNET by email on Monday: “If we find behavior that violates our policies, we take action.”
How it was pulled
The New York Times reported on Dec. 22 that experts considered ToTok a tool “used by the government of the United Arab Emirates to try to track every conversation, movement, relationship, appointment, sound and image of those who install it on their phones.” The BBC, citing the Times, said American officials were among its sources.
Google took the app down on a Thursday and Apple followed the next day. People who already had it installed could keep using it. ToTok, which markets itself as an easy and secure way to chat by video or text, was only a few months old. The Play Store showed five million Android downloads before the removal, and the tracking firm App Annie ranked it among the most downloaded social apps in the US that week.
The Times tied the app’s publisher, Breej Holding Ltd, to DarkMatter, an Abu Dhabi intelligence and hacking firm that is allegedly under FBI investigation for possible cyber-crimes. DarkMatter, according to the Times, employs Emirati intelligence officials along with former National Security Agency staff and former Israeli military intelligence operatives. ToTok, DarkMatter and the UAE embassy in London did not immediately answer the BBC’s request for comment.
Objective-See, a security firm that said it worked with the Times, analysed the iOS app on a jailbroken iPhone. It found no backdoors, no malware and no exploits, and said the app’s legitimacy was “really the genius of the whole mass surveillance operation.”
The founders push back
ToTok co-founders Giacomo Ziani and Long Ruan rejected the allegation on Dec. 24. They cited a technical analysis by a former NSA employee, which they said concluded that ToTok “simply does what it claims to do, and really nothing more… no exploits, no backdoors, and no malware.”
In a Dec. 29 interview with the Khaleej Times, Ziani said he did not know why the app had been singled out. He insisted it had no ties to any government and followed local and international rules in every country where it operates.
During the removal, ToTok told users it was working with Google and Apple on the problem and promised new features, including payment, news, commerce and entertainment. New users with Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo phones could still get the app from those makers’ own stores.
The reprieve did not last. By Feb. 17, Android Central reported, Google had pulled ToTok from the Play Store again, as confirmed by The Verge. Apple never restored it.
Sources
- ToTok returns to Google Play Store after accusations of spying – CNET
- Google and Apple remove alleged UAE spy app ToTok
- Google pulls alleged Emirati spyware app — ToTok — from the Play Store
