It’s already been pulled off the store because it was too easy to reverse engineer the server and listen to other people’s calls.
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
74 points (98.7% liked)
Privacy
4001 readers
69 users here now
Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
Rules
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
- Be civil and no prejudice
- Don't promote big-tech software
- No apathy and defeatism for privacy (i.e. "They already have my data, why bother?")
- No reposting of news that was already posted
- No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
- No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)
Related communities:
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
- !opensource@programming.dev
- !selfhosting@slrpnk.net / !selfhosted@lemmy.world
- !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !drm@lemmy.dbzer0.com
founded 11 months ago
MODERATORS
After being notified of the security lapse, the app’s founder took the servers offline. In a message sent to users, the company cited a need to “add extra layers of security” during a period of rapid growth.
if they do come back and people still sign up i will actually go insane
We live in a world where people take out loans to buy groceries. For the desperate and destitute, they may find this worth it.
...doesn't make it any less fucked though.
Two phones with free calls, a couple of TTS engines randomly pulling from reddit / the bible, a couple of those bobbing bird things, this thing prints money and poisons the well for a couple hours work.
This is insane. A good government would legislate against this, but with current ones, they may even be one of the potential data buyers.
Holy shit, WTF is wrong with people?
Like, everyone here. Who makes this? Who uses this? All idiots.
Apparently some users were calling people and recording regular background conversations just to get paid. This was discovered because all of the calls were publicly available
So like 20 geniuses, and the rest fools all the way down. Cool.
Why not feed them AI-generated calls to both earn money and poison their datasets?
Obviously, there are plenty of reasons to decry this. However, actually paying the end user is a million times better than the harvesting that has been going on for years with not much tangible benefit to users.
What about the other persons' on the call who didn't consent?
yeah but they're paying people pennies compared to the amount of money they'll make from selling and reselling this (not just to AI companies). Its a small one time payment. TOS also gives them carte blanche to do whatever they want with your voice and all the information they have on you. This is a whole lot worse for the user.
Been hearing a lot about this. Has anybody heard of this app before this story started breaking? How TF did it get to #2?
Also, it seems that what the app does has never been a secret. Their tag line is something like "phone companies make money off your calls, now you can too." I don't think they were doing anything secretive. People knew they were selling recordings of their phone conversations. So... what's the problem? Aside from the fact that I, and I would imagine most who would be subscribed to a /privacy community, would never use it. It's not for us.
This is a very good reason for Android to allow voice recording
Technically it already allows it.
Does is?
Yes, but in some countries is illegal so you won't always have this option available.
In my country it is legal, yet the dialer app that came with the stock OS of my device, that was bought in a local shop, didn't have the recording feature.
Now that I have Lineage installed I am able to record calls from the default Dialer app.