Russian-made YotaPhone Lets The FSB Spy On You

The YotaPhone is a pretty cool concept. For those unfamiliar, it’s basically a smartphone with two displays – one in the front and an e-ink display on the back that helps display notifications without being too much of a battery drain. Pretty cool, huh? In fact come summer 2015, the handset is expected to make its way stateside.

Unfortunately if you thought the NSA spying on US citizens was very uncool, here’s a heads up. According to a report from Hi-tech.mail.ru (via PhoneArena), it seems that the YotaPhone will basically give the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service, former KGB) the ability to spy on you through built-in backdoors.

This was supposedly admitted by Rostech, the company that makes the phone. According to Sergey Chemezov, the head of the company, “The FSB (aka Federal Security Service, former KGB) will have access [to users’ information]. We don’t have the right to sell phones on the market in any other way – otherwise, the devices could be used by terrorists, criminals.” Now assuming that the translation was not off, it certainly sounds like an admission.

We suppose his logic is that by placing a backdoor, it will ensure that the FSB will be able to keep tabs on criminals and terrorists. At the same time we can’t help but feel that it is an invasion of privacy which kind of has us thinking twice about whether or not the YotaPhone will be worth getting, as cool as it might be.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Hacking, Security, spy, yotaphone