{"id":13214,"date":"2020-02-18T00:06:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T23:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/159.69.82.204\/win\/?p=13214"},"modified":"2020-02-17T22:46:55","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T21:46:55","slug":"google-kicks-totok-app-out-from-play-store-for-spying-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/2020\/02\/18\/google-kicks-totok-app-out-from-play-store-for-spying-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Google kicks ToTok app out from Play Store for spying again&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: left; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline\" src=\"https:\/\/www.borncity.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Schutz.jpg\" width=\"40\" align=\"left\" height=\"47\">[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.borncity.com\/blog\/?p=228346\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">German<\/a>]I just came across the news that Google has kicked the Android app ToTok (a chat program) out of the Google Play Store again because of spying features. There was something in December 2019, which I had reported about at that time.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Short review<\/h2>\n<p>The chat app ToTok, available on Apple and Android devices, has probably spied out millions of users on their mobile devices. The app was written by developers from the United Arab Emirates (BAE), and fished out all the information it could get. Apple and Google threw the app out of the store. I had the case detailed on December 23, 2019 in the German blog post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.borncity.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/23\/totok-chat-app-sphte-nutzer-aus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ToTok: Chat-App sp\u00e4hte Nutzer aus<\/a>. <\/p>\n<h2>Into the store, out of the store<\/h2>\n<p>Apparently something got a Google person to put the app back into the Play Store for Android at a later date, after the dust had settled.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Google confirms it again removed alleged spying tool ToTok from Google Play <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/4TZLvs85nx\">https:\/\/t.co\/4TZLvs85nx<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sarahintampa?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@sarahintampa<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/cYdz06iabM\">pic.twitter.com\/cYdz06iabM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TechCrunch\/status\/1229467541694767106?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 17, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span id=\"preserveee906e9266ff45ac975d17dd23f67e09\" class=\"wlWriterPreserve\"><SCRIPT charset=\"utf-8\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async><\/SCRIPT><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>Now I read in the above tweet from Techcrunch that Google has thrown the app ToTok out of the Play Store a second time. At first <a href=\"https:\/\/9to5google.com\/2020\/02\/14\/google-play-removes-totok\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">9to5google.com noticed<\/a> that the app disappeared again. Techcrunch asked and Google confirmed that they removed the app &#8211; but not the developer of the app &#8211; from Google Play. Google made it clear that this action was not in response to an external instruction or request &#8211; i.e. intervention by the US government or any other agency. The decision was made internally. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[German]I just came across the news that Google has kicked the Android app ToTok (a chat program) out of the Google Play Store again because of spying features. There was something in December 2019, which I had reported about at &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/2020\/02\/18\/google-kicks-totok-app-out-from-play-store-for-spying-again\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,580],"tags":[60,78,69,2284],"class_list":["post-13214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-android","category-security","tag-android","tag-app","tag-security","tag-totok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borncity.com\/win\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}