A software company whose code is used in thousands of widely downloaded American apps has been pretending to be based in the U.S. The company, Pushwoosh, used fake street addresses and even fake employee profiles onLinkedIn to create the illusion that it was based in the U.S., but the firm actually calls a remote city in Siberia home.
Pushwoosh has advertised on social media that it is based in the US. There are at least eight thousand different apps on the Apple store and at least eight thousand different apps on the Google play store.
The CDC used the company's code in at least seven different public-facing apps. The company was also contracted by the army.
The report shows that the company is misrepresenting itself. The CDC and the Army stopped using the company's code after learning that Pushwoosh had lied.
There are conflicting information that the company has provided to the US and Russian governments. Pushwoosh never characterized itself as a Russian company in its filing with the state of Delaware. The city of Novosibirsk is located in the province of Siberia and is where it is based.
Max Konev told the outlet that Pushwoosh has no connection with the Russian government and that he had not tried to hide the company's roots. He said that he was proud to be Russian.
The company has a number of physical addresses in the US that aren't connected to it. Konev's friend told the reporters that he had nothing to do with Pushwoosh and had only agreed to allow Konev to use his address to get mail.
The company created a number of social media profiles for U.S. based executives that are also fictional. Konev claims that the fake profiles were created by a marketing agency in order to use social media to sell Pushwoosh.
This company isn't what it seems and that data collected by it could have been used by the Russian government. There isn't any evidence that Pushwoosh did either of those things Russian law enforcement has a history of forcing Russian companies to give user data to the government.
If the company responds, the story will be updated.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
