(Bloomberg) — Twitter Inc. told a U.S. senator it is cutting ties with a European technology company that helped it send sensitive passcodes to its users via text message.
The social media firm said in a disclosure to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, that it is “transitioning” its service away from working with Mitto AG, according to a Wyden aide.
A co-founder of Mitto operated a service that helped governments secretly surveil and track mobile phones, according to former employees and clients, as Bloomberg News and London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported in December. Twitter cited media reports as the motivating factor behind its decision, the Wyden aide said.
Several other companies have allegedly already cut ties with Mitto. In recent weeks, messaging companies Kaleyra and MessageBird have both ceased commercial relationships with Mitto, according to three people familiar with the matter.
A Twitter representative declined to comment.
A spokesman for Mitto, which is based in Zug, Switzerland, said in an emailed statement that the company “does not disclose information about its business partners, through any channel – official or unofficial – full stop. Generally, such agreements are mutual in nature, with both parties agreeing to protect the privacy and integrity of the other.”
Closely held Mitto works with leading telecommunications companies to deliver text messages in bulk to billions of phones around the world, according to its website and promotional documents. Mitto sends out automated text messages for such things as sales promotions, appointment reminders and two-factor security codes needed to log in to online accounts.
However Mitto’s co-founder and chief operating officer, Ilja Gorelik, was also allegedly selling access to Mitto’s networks to secretly locate people via their mobile phones, and in some cases obtain their call logs, Bloomberg reported. The Mitto venture also allegedly involved exploiting weaknesses in a telecommunications protocol known as SS7, or Signaling System 7, a sort of switchboard for the global telecommunications industry.
A Mitto representative previously said that the company had no involvement in any surveillance business and had launched an internal investigation “to determine if our technology and business has been compromised” and would take corrective action if necessary. Mitto representatives allegedly informed some clients that Gorelik was no longer involved at the company.
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