Technological advancements have turned into an aid for many criminal activities, as many criminals communicate from one side of the world to the other completely unfearful that they might get caught.

One of these smart devices is the BQ Aquarius, pointed out by the Italian Anti-Mafia squad after it was detected as a means of communication between gang members.

“Encrypted messages are a form of communication that denies access to third parties. There are several applications that enable that feature”, said journalist Brenton Bënja.

In 2020, several countries in Europe were able to break into Enkro Chat and Sky Ecc, applications that were used broadly by members of various organized crime groups, including Albanian ones. The operation led to the arrest of dozens of people in Belgium and the Netherlands.

“The creation of this sort of applications bears a high cost, mostly server maintenance. In general, states do have access in servers so the developers of these applications look for states where they can find legal loopholes when saving the messages”, added Bënja.

The investigations into Sky Ecc revealed that the app had over 170,000 users across the world. Along with Enkro Chat, these apps were facilitating the communication of millions of encrypted messages among European, Asian, and Latin American organized crime groups.