Confused
I thought Huawei were the bad guys and tyrannical medieval middle eastern countries were the good guys?
Emirati 'surveillance app' ToTok promoted by Huawei as Apple punts it from store
A popular UAE messaging app has been reportedly used by the country's government to spy on its population. This app, called ToTok, passed all the usual Google Play and Apple App Store checks. Huawei even promoted it via social media. On its Huawei Mobile Services MENA Facebook page, which has over 1.8 million likes, the …
-
-
Monday 23rd December 2019 15:27 GMT Robert Carnegie
Re: Why ask Huawei?
Obviously the government, like all others, wants you to use encryption that it has keys to. They gave themselves permission.
The new catch is that the spy software also watches and listens all the time through the camera, microphone, and location sensor. That went too far, apparently.
-
-
Tuesday 24th December 2019 03:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Whch one of the unwritten google policies did they break?
Was it the one about stealing revenue from the chocofac? As in they, the UAE did the spying and slurping that google normally does, before using a broker to sell this back to them via a dodgy arms length third party? Maybe I am just too cynical....
-
Tuesday 24th December 2019 10:36 GMT phuzz
Re: Whch one of the unwritten google policies did they break?
I'm assuming it was a free app, so google aren't losing out on any money by banning it, and on the other hand they don't get much in the way of bad publicity because they've managed to ban it relatively quickly. It's basically a no brainer.
"Was it the one about stealing revenue from the chocofac?"
Come on, you think google would have allowed it in the store in the first place, if it was making money that they weren't getting a cut of? You're not cynical enough I think ;)
-
Tuesday 24th December 2019 11:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Whch one of the unwritten google policies did they break?
I think that I was, err, no, I was sarcastically saying that they were doing the same think that google does, and the UAE needn't have handed over any money to google.
For fucks sake people, aren't you sick of being fucked over by scroogle fuckbook at twatter?
-
-
-
Tuesday 24th December 2019 17:19 GMT NonSSL-Login
Trying to be like the Daily mail?
So much mention of Huawei in this negative article and even the story URL when Huawei is not the bad guy here. Seriously makes me want to start blocking stupid story authors.
UAE trying it on like other countries. Don't see any articles besmirching Apple or Google for recommending Whatsapp when they introduced the unencrypted backup on Google servers front/backdoor which I have no doubt was done to give NSA access to those messages.
I'm surprised there wasnt a dig at kersperkys AV for not picking it up as malicious or something too.
Pathetc. /Rant
-
Friday 27th December 2019 17:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Trying to be like the Daily mail?
Just for the record Matthew Hughes, are companies supposed to abide by the laws of the countries they operate in?
Or are you using American exceptionalism to justify that US law is the only one that matters?
-
Wednesday 1st January 2020 21:21 GMT Kiwi
Don't really blame Huawei here...
The article states that they'd not pulled it immediately. Based on rumour and FUD, based on one guys code analysis where that one guy says "Ohh this looks dodgy, I don't really know about this company in another nation so it must be a dodgy government front!"
I can understand Huawei's reluctance to drop something with so little real evidence. They themselves have been there before many times, and they know that one conspiracy nutter is plenty to repel 1,000,000,000 independent reviews that show absolutely nothing wrong (if only we could use conspiracy nutters as ablative armour - they seem to distort so much around them!)
Dammit.. Wish I'd got to this tab when it was a fresh story :(
-
Biting the hand that feeds IT
