'Talking Angela' Hoax Propels Game to No. 3 in App Store

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Image: Mashable, Will Fenstermaker

By Karissa Bell2014-02-22 02:00:40 UTC

Talking Angela is the latest game to make it to the top of the charts in the App Store thanks to an outpouring of social media attention.

But unlike Flappy Bird , the talk around Talking Angela has been decidedly more negative. The game is currently at the center of a massive hoax that claims the app is targeting child users by stealing personal information.

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Talking Angela is one of a series of similar apps made by Outfit7, an entertainment company based in Cyprus. Each game in the series, called Talking Tom and Friends, stars a different animal users can interact with in various ways.

In Talking Angela, players primarily interact with Angela, the cat, by asking and answering questions. Angela uses "chat bot" technology to converse with users. Questions are answered differently based on the age of the user and in-app settings. Players can also "pet" Angela, take quizzes, or turn on their device's front-facing camera and microphone to voice chat with the feline.

The Talking Angela app allows users to interact with a virtual cat by playing games and asking and answering questions.

Rumors that the app was somehow targeting its child users first cropped up almost exactly a year ago, according to Snopes, a fact-checking site, which debunked the rumors in February 2013:

Since Talking Angela was released in December 2012, rumors about its supposedly unsafe nature have grown and spread to the point that some of the more far-fetched information now circulating about it claims that the app is being used as a recruiting tool for pedophiles or is driven by "hackers" who engage children in live conversations. All of this sort of misinformation is completely unfounded.

Sophos' security blog Naked Security also debunked the rumors at that time. "The truth is that 'Talking Angela' appears to be entirely benign, and there are no obvious privacy concerns that differentiate it from thousands of other iPhone apps," said Naked Security in a blog post.

For reasons that still aren't clear, the rumor returned in full force over the last few days on Facebook and Twitter, where users began posting "warnings" claiming the app was not safe for children. Allegations included claims that the app asks children for personal information like their home address, as well as claims that the game is actually a front for pedophiles targeting children.

"It became so ridiculous, some of the things people were saying, forgetting basic physics," Outfit7's senior brand director Randeep Sidhu told Mashable. "Behind your iPhone screen is not a secret camera in Angela's eye. This is ridiculous."

The renewed attention surrounding the app has propelled it to the top of the app charts in just a few days. The game, which first launched in the App Store in December of 2012, is currently the No. 3 app overall and No. 1 in the App Store's Entertainment category.

According to App Annie, the app went from being #105 overall app on Feb. 17, to #57 Feb. 18, to #3 on Wednesday, Feb. 20.

Outfit7, whose apps have been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times since the company's founding in 2010, has repeatedly emphasized the safety of its products and that rumors swirling around social media are completely unfounded. "As a company that supports family-friendly entertainment we ensure we are protecting personal privacy and offering a safe environment for game-play," the company said in a blog post addressing the issue. The post goes on to detail exactly what types of data the app actually collects:

The app sends anonymized and obfuscated data log files to Outfit7. This data relates to the chat history that cannot be attributed to any individual person and any personal details that are provided voluntarily (e.g. names, addresses, places, etc.) are deleted within the app before they are sent.

Yet the misinformation continues to spread, to the frustration of Sidhu and others at Outfit7. "It's a family company," said Sidhu. "The people who run this company, we're a big family. This negative impression about pedophilia is really upsetting for us."

In our own testing of the app, we were unable to replicate any of the alleged inappropriate responses, even when intentionally saying provocative things. Each time, Angela's reply was completely innocuous, if at times nonsensical.

For example, one user claimed that the app responded in the affirmative when asked whether it sexually assaulted boys. But in our tests, Angela responded to that question with a firm "No! Stop scaring me with those questions!"

Though it's still not clear how the hoax got started, what is clear is how a powerful social media reaction— even a negative one— can cause an app to enter the App Store's top ten virtually overnight.

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Topics: Android, apps-and-software, Apps and Software, iOS, Outfit7, Tech