For Russians who fear that someone may be eavesdropping on their phone conversations, leading IT entrepreneur Natalya Kaspersky says she has a solution. At a business forum in Moscow on Friday she presented "TaigaPhone", a brand new smartphone created by InfoWatch Group, her software development company, costing around 15,000 rubles ($260).
The TaigaPhone is entirely green to represent the Russian northern forest after which it is named and has a five-inch touch screen. "We have created it for the corporate market," said Kaspersky, president of InfoWatch Group and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, Russia's leading antivirus software development company which some believe may have links to Russian intelligence.
Kaspersky Lab has over the past months been at the centre of controversy in the United States. In July, the US government removed Kaspersky from its list of approved vendors, weeks after top US intelligence agency and law enforcement officials expressed concerns about the safety of its software.