A new Israeli mobile app heralded as the “next big messaging application” is coming under fire amid allegations that it will encourage online bullying and sexual harassment.

Blindspot works by accessing a user’s contacts, allowing them to send text messages, videos, or photos to anyone without the receiver knowing who the message came from. To read the message, a recipient needs to download Blindspot, but would not know who sent it. It has been developed by a company with a number of celebrity investors, including the singers Nicki Minaj and will.i.am and the Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich.



The app has been downloaded half a million times since its launch, and is being heavily advertised in Israel with billboards showing a smiley face with an eye patch.

Members of the country’s parliament, television pundits and young Israelis have joined in criticism of the app. The controversy has seen an anti-Blindspot video, which depicts a family covering a coffin decorated with the app’s logo, go viral. It bears a similarity to Secret, an app that was closed down after campaigners said it was used to bully people online.

The app was developed by the technology company Shellanoo Group, whose chairman, Oded Kobo, described it as “wacky and clever, yet so simple to use”. But it has been dogged by criticism that it is being abused.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An image from the video depicting a family covering a coffin decorated with the app’s logo. Photograph: Anti-Blindspot campaign

Negative reviews have been posted on the iTunes store as part of the campaign to shut the app down.



“DELETE FROM THE STORE IMMEDIATELY!!” wrote Shirloveit. “Just think about all those bullies out there, waiting for an opportunity like this to hurt others just for their fun! IT’S TERRIBLE! Do not let them use this app just because you’re making money out of it!!”

“Pure evil – don’t let your kids use it,” added Yaniv B. “This app can ruin lives by anonymously shaming online. Terrible idea, has no benefit whatsoever. Uninstalling...”

The campaign comes amid growing pressure against online bullying and abuse on social media. Twitter last year announced new measures against abuse after a leaked internal memo admitted it had failed to tackle the issue.

Among those who have weighed into the controversy is Israeli blogger and screenwriter Eli Weissbart, who criticised the app in a widely shared post. “This cute smiley is an open channel for humiliation, a gaping doorway for evil,” he wrote. “It really doesn’t matter whether your child is the victim or the victimiser.”

Since the app’s launch, complaints have appeared on social media, many apparently from young people saying they had been targeted for abuse.

The app also came under fire this week from members of a Knesset committee. During a meeting, Israeli MP Merav Ben Ari said she was concerned that young people would be bullied and that there was even a risk of people killing themselves.

On Monday, the technology committee in Israel’s parliament met to discuss the app and a letter was read out from a young person who had suffered from online bullying. Ben Ari said that “during the two hours we didn’t hear even one thing that was good about this app”. She added: “If you are going to say something nice, you wouldn’t send it anonymously.”



But David Strauss, a spokesman for Blindspot’s parent company, said anonymity online was “simply an evolution, whether people like it or not”.

The issue of suicide is particularly sensitive in Israel at the moment, with memories still fresh of the case of a civil servant who killed himself last summer after being accused of racism on Facebook – an accusation he denied.



Adam Shafir, a reporter on an Israeli technology television show, told Agence France-Presse there had already been cases of bullying. “You have a lot of sexual harassment – guys send girls remarks about their bodies, about the things they would like to do to them,” he said. “And then there are specific threats, people saying things like ‘I will kill you.’ ”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An advert for Blindspot in Tel Aviv. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty

Shafir highlighted the case of a couple who were travelling in Europe when they received a message on Blindspot. “The wife got messages saying her husband is cheating on her,” he said. “The man denies he is cheating, but this can destroy marriages.”

Shellanoo Group has rejected criticism. “Blindspot is an app for sending anonymous messages that was launched less than a week ago, and has already become the top-ranked app in the Google Play and App Store stores,” the company said in a statement this week. “Users can send messages to each other from within their contacts. Nevertheless, any user can block any message by pressing a single button. If only we could act that way in real life when someone around us acts inappropriately.

“The messages aren’t public, and we take precautions in the app,” the statement added. “Blindspot isn’t the first anonymous app and certainly not the only one, but it is undoubtedly the most popular.”