(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


Swiss tech company boss accused of selling mobile network access for spying

2021-12-06 00:00:00

The co-founder of a company trusted by Google and Twitter to text security codes to millions of users also ran a service that helped governments secretly surveil and track mobile phones, according to former employees and clients.

Since it started in 2013, Mitto AG has established itself as a provider of automated text messages for such things as sales promotions, security codes and appointment reminders. Mitto, a privately held company with headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, has grown its business by establishing relationships with telecom operators in more than 100 countries.

It has brokered deals that gave it the ability to deliver text messages to billions of phones in most corners of the world, including countries that are otherwise difficult for Western companies to penetrate such as Iran and Afghanistan. It has attracted major technology giants as customers, including Google, Twitter, WhatsApp, Microsoft’s LinkedIn and messaging app Telegram, in addition to China’s TikTok, Tencent and Alibaba, according to Mitto documents and former employees.

But an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, carried out in collaboration with Bloomberg News, indicated that the company’s co-founder and chief operating officer, Ilja Gorelik, was also providing another service: selling access to Mitto’s networks to secretly locate people via their mobile phones.

That Mitto’s networks were also being used for surveillance work was not shared with the company’s technology clients, or the mobile networks Mitto works with to spread its text messages and other communications, according to former Mitto employees. The existence of the alternate service was only known to a small number of people within the company, these former employees said. Gorelik sold the service to surveillance companies which in turn contracted with government agencies, according to the employees.
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[1] URL: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2021-12-06/swiss-tech-company-boss-accused-of-selling-mobile-network-access-for-spying
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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