Encrypted message app Exclu shut down by police following criminal allegations

Date:
Tue, 07 Feb 2023 13:55:31 +0000

Description:
Several arrests have been made, including alleged drug lords, as Exclu falls under scrutiny.

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Encrypted messaging app Exclu has been dismantled and its founders arrested following reports its founders were operating a service used by various criminals, including drug lords.

Police in the Netherlands ran two investigations, one from September 2020,
and one from April 2022, receiving help from Eurojust, Europol, as well as police forces in Italy, Sweden, France, and Germany. A total of 79 targeted searches were conducted in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium, 22 of which happened in the Netherlands.

In total, 42 people were arrested, including 11 people believed to be
directly connected to the Exclu platform - two of them are allegedly owners and managers of the platform. Others were various criminals, including operators of a drug lab which were found in possession of narcotics,
firearms, and over 4 million euros in cash. Dozens arrested

Exclu was an encrypted subscription-based communications platform, which people could get for 800 for six months. It offered multimedia communication, in which people could share text messages, voice messages, images, and
videos.

Citing police reports, BleepingComputer claims the app had 3,000 users, 750
of which were based in the Netherlands. Read more

Police arrest hundreds of criminals after infiltrating their encrypted

phone system

Sky Global apparently shuts down following police arrests

These are the best privacy tools right now

Before dismantling the app and arresting the people, the police say it
managed to hack into the app and obtain communication data. Taking into account previous such events (when the police did the same for ANOM, or Sky, both of which were encrypted communications platforms used by criminals), its safe to assume that there will be more arrests, as the police go through larger sets of data. Just in ANOMs case, there had been more than 800 arrests so far.

The police have also urged innocent people using the platform for its privacy benefits - lawyers, doctors, etc - to come forth and demand their data be removed. Here are the best VPNs right now



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/encrypted-message-app-exclu-shut-down-by-police -following-criminal-fears


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