The Watchdog is always seeking ways to protect your privacy. But this latest one surprised me. I never expected the purveyor of a new mobile threat protection app would be the city of Dallas.
Dallas is the first Texas city to offer its residents, businesses and tourists a new smartphone app that promises it blocks criminal threats. It’s free.
Dallas Secure is the name, but in The Watchdog’s reporting on this, I can spill this tidbit I learned: This app will work from any smartphone anywhere in Texas and even across the U.S. You don’t have to live or work in Dallas to get it for free.
Dallas gets its name on the app because the company that created it is headquartered in Dallas. The chief executive, Shridhar Mittal, is a Dallas resident.
He told me he wanted to do something special for his hometown.
First, we must ask, is the parent company reliable?
That company, Zimperium, which has its headquarters on Valley View Lane in Dallas, makes its money by selling a more robust version of the app for staffers at the U.S. Department of Defense and some of the nation’s largest banks, Mittal said. His app protects the phones of workers with top security clearances.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is a lead investor. Mnuchin is also chairman of the company’s board of directors.
A hundred staffers work at the company’s Dallas headquarters. Offices around the world have another 200 staffers, Mittal said.
Dallas Secure rolled out quietly in December. The city of Dallas paid Zimperium $61,000 for the first-year pilot program.
Brian Gardner, Dallas’ chief information security officer, who worked on the project, said he expects the contract will be renewed because the program is growing and has the potential to protect a lot of people.
New York City, Los Angeles and the state of Michigan have similar apps built by this company.
Dallas deserves credit for this attempt to protect its people from a new kind of crime wave.
To load Dallas Secure on your phone for a test ride, go to the Apple App Store or Google Play (wherever you get your apps) and search for Dallas Secure.
You don’t have to create an account. You don’t give the app your name or email address, something many apps require. Dallas Secure isn’t interested in capturing your data, Mittal said.
Gardner told me, “We’re not collecting their data. I don’t need to be Big Brother. I don’t want to be Big Brother. All I want to do is offer residents something that would protect them from cyber crimes.”
WHAT DOES DALLAS SECURE DO?
According to Mittal, it seeks to block users from falling for an email or a text from crooks. It recognizes web pages and websites that are harmful. It screens public Wi-Fi networks and warns you if one appears to be compromised. It blocks phishing attempts that can lead to ransomware attacks, and it scans QR codes to make sure they’re clean.
Mittal brags that his app even blocks the notorious Pegasus software developed by an Israeli cyber arms company. Pegasus can steal data from mobile phones running most versions of iOS and Android.
The battery drain from Dallas Secure (always a worry) is minimal, Gardner said. The app runs nonintrusively in the background.
Mittal advises that if you download Dallas Secure, be sure to watch the tutorials on the app so you can set it up to your liking.
THE ONLY PROBLEM
Although I’ve downloaded the app, I haven’t yet watched the tutorials or seen how it handles criminal come-ons.
The only problem I’ve had so far came when I read through the company’s privacy statement. It gives the app permission to collect more types of personal data than I was told. When I brought this up to Mittal, he realized that his privacy statement for business and government users was what I found, instead of the city version’s policy, which collects less data.
“We need to fix that,” Mittal said.
This new app is worth a try. Dallas has not yet made a big publicity push. But why wait, right? Here I am with the news.
CORRECTION, 11:45 p.m., Feb. 23, 2023: An early version of this story misspelled the name of the company Zimperium.
©2023 The Dallas Morning News, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
