I have that weird feeling too. I'll try to put my finger on it in a non-sarcastic way.

1. This plays into the US's helicopter parenting culture of fear

2. Most kidnappings are by someone you already know. The "shopping at the mall" example is again, more fear mongering

https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/chil...

> Parents were the perpetrators in more than 90 percent of kidnappings and abductions

3. The app is to store photos of your kid? Just use your camera gallery. I guarantee it's easier to use than the FBI's clunky app (inferred from their screenshot of a 10-year-old iOS version)

4. This is life, you can't solve everything with an app. Get your head out of your phone and open your eyes and look for your kid, they're probably one store down at the arcade

There's no way of saying it without sounding sarcastic that yes, this feels like a scam, if not just a bad idea. The fact that they have to come out and say, "no, we're not storing pictures of your kids" doesn't help. The idea of the app is sound, and one would hope you could trust the Federal Government with such information (like they don't have it already), but the iOS6 era screenshots and verbiage feel like a real scam.

I think this might be abandonware.

From page source: <meta name="DC.date.created" content="2018-01-24T18:18:24+00:00">

Their news site looks like abandonware.

I agree the design is definitely outdated. It's also hilarious that it's exactly the kind of look I would've expected from an app released by the FBI.

It would be pretty easy to do a packet inspection and see if they're telling the truth about not transmitting the photos.

And how does one do packet inspection:

* if packets are only sent via carrier, not wifi

* if packets are sent to aws instances, which is very common

* if it all stops when phone is rooted, which is common for many apps

* deep packet inspection of carrier based communications is a thing [1].

* Gov't is mandated to use AWS Gov instances which are quite easy to distinguish [2].

* there are ways to bypass those rootchecks to make a rooted phone seem not rooted [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection#United_...

[2] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-govcloud-earns-dod...

[3] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68661134/root-detection-...

> Gov't is mandated to use AWS Gov instances which are quite easy to distinguish

That's not, in fact, true. The certifications that apply to AWS Gov make it easier to meet certain government compliance rules that apply to certain categories of data, but it is possible to meet the standards on a platform that isn't certified or certified to a lower level (but it means more administrative work for the org using the platform) and many Commercial AWS offerings have FedRAMP certifications, anyhow. I work in an org touched by FedRAMP, and which is almost entirely on AWS commercial, not Gov.

Consider that AWS Gov can offer a service disguising instances as ordinary.

Consider that they wouldn't have to tell us, indeed, might face criminal penalties for disclosing it.

Conclusion: the FBI can do this.

The app seems like a great idea and there honestly seems to be no particular reason why the FBI had to make it.

In the case of a child disappearing, it could save a lot of time.

If I was going to download /any/ app from the App Store in which to store pictures and factual data about my kids, I would hope I could trust the FBI more than Joe's App Shack or another anonymous developer. But in this case, if they're not going to tend to their app and it's marketing site, hard pass.

I personally suspect that it'll be used as training data to generate avatars for the FBI to entrap people with.

Felt off to me too. My guess is that it's a makework project they put a batch of summer interns on to keep them out of trouble.

My guess is some subcontractor got to build it and charge an obscene amount of money for it.

Isn't this fairly easy to investigate and find out? If the app never phones home then it really isn't an issue.

A future update of the app might start phoning home.

People who are have the skills to investigate home phoning might get a version pushed that doesn't phone home.

/tinfoil

You don't even have to assume tinfoil hattery to think that a future update might phone home -- just a change in internal politics / leadership can lead to that.

Installing any kind of channel back to the FBI on an Android device from who-knows-where with who-knows-what malware running on it feels like a disaster waiting to happen.