The Government of Pakistan has announced a ban against the use of the popular smartphone message and calling app, Viber for its officials due to security reasons.
According to reports, the members of the government have been restricted from using the voice-over-IP mobile service for being a sponsored application of four Israeli entrepreneurs who previously served in the nation’s Defense Forces
Accused as a tool for spying and tracking down people, Viber was declared banned in a directive memo issued to all the ministers and representatives by the Cabinet Divison’s “National Telecom and Information Technology Security Board”.
A clause of the memo stated that,
“A copy of the phones address book and call details record are stored on Viber server. Location information is stored on Viber server. Viber can share or disclose collected user information to comply with their trusted law enforcement agencies.”
Since Viber can get access to private information like text messages, network location, contacts, system settings, social stream along with Google account and services, the application is considered a major threat to the safety of the officials of Government of Pakistan.
“Viber uses a number of unauthorized techniques including cookies, clear GIFs and other automatic data collection techniques to spy and track its users”, further states the memo.
Research has also lead to same shady facts about the popular application. Though Viber is registered in Cyprus and the development of the application is outsourced from Belarus, its media is powered and managed by Israel.
Even the funding and the investors of the application is an unsolved mystery till date.
“Viber media does not have known investors therefore it is highly likely that it may be a state sponsored application which is capable of monitoring every activity of a user,” stated the memo.
The four founders Talmon Marco as the CEO, Igor Megzinik, Sani Maroli and Samocha are also believed to be the investors. Moreover, Macro identifies the investors as members of his friends and family. According to the report, investments of around $20 million have been funded for the service till May 2013.
Also, it is rumored that the company tries hard to hush away its origins to Israel from the rest of the world.
The rival of Skype, Viber is one of the five most downloaded smartphone calling and messaging applications of the world. It was acquired by a Japanese e-commerce firm for $900 million, back in February 2014.
