Many TikTok users are currently seeing advertisements for the Dezor browser. The app sits enthroned above the Play Store charts. In this text we will tell you what this is all about.
We clarify what makes Dezor so popular and whether its use is legal. (Source: jamdesign /depositphotos.com)
- Dezor is a new, proprietary browser from a Swiss company.
- It is free and can go to a website that allows paid content to be streamed without a fee.
- The company behind Dezor is dubious and its use is illegal.
For as long as the Internet has existed, people have been tempted to copy content that is actually subject to a fee, upload it and make it accessible free of charge. Hundreds of millions of videos are pirated every year – they are also consumed illegally in Germany via systems such as torrents. Now a new option is trending: the Dezor browser is going through the roof on social media channels. We’ll explain what it’s all about.
Dezor for Android: Proprietary browser from Switzerland
At first glance, Dezor appears to be a regular browser. It is normally available in the Google Play Store and can be downloaded for free. You can use the program to call up all the pages that can also be reached with Chrome or Firefox. What is special, however, is the fact that the browser was developed from scratch – it is not based on Chromium or on another browser engine.
A company from Switzerland is behind the browser. Dezor SA is the first thing that is dubious about the matter: the company never made a public appearance before the application was released. The management and board of directors are irrelevant in the public eye, the domain owned by the company is registered to an address in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik.
Shady company behind Dezor
There are also indications that the company could be connected to the illegal streaming provider Rokkr: the two companies share a mail server, and the two companies’ registration addresses are not far from each other in Lucerne. That suggests the same people may be stuck between the two products.
The browser itself also includes a free ad blocker and VPN. The web traffic is routed via the server of a Bavarian server company, so that there is no protection from German criminal prosecution. It is extremely dubious that unknown, encrypted data is sent to Dezor SA’s Dutch servers and to the Google Cloud Platform hosting service. What happens to the data and who gets access to it is unclear.
Streaming with Dezor is illegal
The actually decisive function of Dezor is not the ad blocker, the VPN or the hidden collection and forwarding of data. The app has been advertised on social media in particular and on platforms such as TikTok so that it can be used to access streaming content such as series, films or sports broadcasts free of charge. A special page is called up that can only be accessed with this browser.
Here it is very clear: Streaming with Dezor is illegal. The use of the app itself is not a problem, but you only enter the criminal area when you call up the special website. According to a judgment of the European Court of Justice in 2017, streams of such are punishable and can be punished with a hefty warning, as they infringe the copyrights of the rights holders on the content.
Another problem is that visiting such websites often entails risks. Ads are often placed that lead to malicious links. It’s also easy to fall into a subscription trap or something similar here. So you should refrain from using Dezor to illegally stream licensed content if you don’t want to risk a report or warning.
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