Technology

The app uses standard Android TrustManager for SSL with no custom certificate pinning. If you're on a network with a compromised CA (corporate proxies, public wifi with MITM, etc.), traffic between the app and its backends can be intercepted and read.

That doesn't seem right. You would still need the compromised CA cert to be installed on your device. This isn't going to be a problem when connecting to a public Wifi.

The rest of the article is bonkers, though. Classic corporate data-grab app, and then some.

I fell down a wild rabbit hole.

• Dev Forty Five LLC was created 2 weeks ago and lists Ty Nielson as the registered agent
• Ty Nielson is listed and at some point was described on LinkedIn as the Head of Engineering at Gemini (not the Google product) with location in St George, UT. Gemini lists an office in Ogden, UT on linkedin.
• His employment history says he started as a software engineer, but he may not be the head of engineering. I'm unsure if he lives in Utah at all. He did ask how to do authentication in a React Native app properly in stack overflow 7 months ago. Not a great sign.
• Gemini is a product of Blue Rocket, inc. and the primary address for both companies is listed as a thinkspace in Redmond, WA.
• Blue Rocket Inc. also has an office in Ogden Utah and one in West Palm Beach, Florida according to its linkedin - but withdrew their business registration in FL years ago
• A previous (?) head of product for Gemini and/or Blue Rocket is/was Ryan Petty, who was part of a Federal Commission on School Safety roundtable at the White House with Trump, and DeSantis made him the Chair of the Florida State Board of Education
• Jason Kap owns Blue Rocket inc. and was put on the board of Claritev last year, which is now a defendant in an antitrust lawsuit for conspiring with major health insurers to fix prices. The DoJ is currently siding against Claritev
• Jason Kap used to work at Microsoft, MS is also in Redmond WA.
• Kap may live or still have properties in Redmond WA, Belmont MA, Ogden Utah, and possibly others - through shell companies technically owned by his family, such as Player 85 LLC, for which he is an authorised agent
• Kap may have been an LDS bishop in Redmond during a case where the LDS leadership was accused of covering up child molestation by a former Microsoft employee, Buckland Darrell, who was sentenced again a few weeks ago
• According to floodlit there were victims in both Hartman Park Ward, Redmond and Sammamish Valley Washington.
• The registered agent listed for Blue Rocket and Gemini in WA is Kap's wife, with a Redmond WA address matching the charity "Sammamish Trails Youth".

I don't think I'll continue on. There's clearly a lot going on here and it is not looking good. Edit: I lied. But this is the end for me:

• Ryan Petty is currently the Chief Product Officer at XSponse
• Xsponse "is a comprehensive AI security ecosystem committed to enhancing detection, alerting, and mass notification." It lists a Florida virtual office as it address but it's registered in Delaware via Corporation Service Company.
• Corporation Service Company, specialises in being a DE address for companies to claim DE tax residency, and as separate services will act as an ICANN registrar, manage and deploy TLDs and do monitoring and enforcement as "brand protection". Amongst many other things they do.

Not good.

The user tracking is dodgy, yes but i can see it happening in any business where developers are clueless yes men.

As for pay wall countermesures I can see how some person in Trump org not being happy about the links in the app being pay walled and asked the dev to remove the popups which they did without question.

Just 3 down from this post in my feed.

It's good information about how bad the app really is. People should not dismiss the information because of the crappy website complaints.

Anyone have any idea who the devs are? According to the owner tag in the code, it's: https://devfortyfive.com/ but there's no information on the people behind it.

I can't say anything about the content of this blog. It was horribly laggy to scroll on mobile device. And by horribly laggy, I mean like aunt's 1986 vacation slide show on a projector while having dry cookies and tasteless off brand earl grey.

I'm sorry if it sounds rude but I had to bring this on out in the open. What even runs under the hood on that blog..

ELI5?

Btw, this site has no business doing (laggy) scrolling via JS on a fucking blog.
No JavaScript for you.

AI vibe coded slop.

Pretty much exactly what I expected.