The creators of a messaging app accused of handing user data to the Iranian regime live in a British coastal town, the Guardian can reveal. Hadi and Mahdi Anjidani are cofounders of TS Information Technology, established in 2010 and now registered at a tax accountancy in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex. It is the UK branch of Iranian software corporation Towse’e Saman Information Technology (TSIT).
The company makes popular computer games, a payment platform capable of helping Iranians skirt sanctions, and Gap Messenger, a purple messaging app billed as an Iranian alternative to Telegram. While Gap’s public profile says the app is encrypted and does not share data with third parties, Iranian digital rights experts say their investigations contradict those claims.
A report from FilterWatch, which monitors Iran’s internet censorship, has accused Gap Messenger of being among the “main actors and entities that participate in the Iranian government’s internet control and suppression efforts”. Mahdi Anjidani, TSIT’s chief executive, has also widely espoused pro-regime views in Iranian media, including pushing for draconian censorship measures on state television.
Gap and Anjidani’s other platforms are part of Iran’s domestic internet, a parallel network offering a government-controlled option for connectivity to 93 million people. This national internet is a tool designed to enable the regime’s survival amid a crackdown on anti-government protests, accompanied by one of the most severe internet shutdowns in history.
FilterWatch’s report concluded that Gap Messenger appeared to have at least once handed over information on its users to Iranian censorship authorities, according to leaked emails from the attorney general’s office in late 2022. Neither Mahdi nor Hadi Anjidani responded to emails from the Guardian.
