A messaging app was launched with great fanfare, promoted as a fully domestic product. Advertisements proclaimed: “Developed in Japan, stored in Japan, safe and secure for all citizens.” The slogan resonated with a public eager for reassurance. Media outlets amplified the message, publishing glowing features about the app’s “national pedigree.”
Consumers, weary of foreign tech scandals, readily accepted the narrative. “If it’s made here, it must be safe,” one user said. Few asked the obvious: Why? On what grounds?
The app positioned itself as a patriotic alternative to foreign platforms, promising privacy through domestic development and local data storage. The campaign leaned heavily on cultural memory: in Japan, food origin scandals — such as mislabeled beef and vegetables sold as local when they were actually imported — have repeatedly shattered consumer trust. By contrast, the app’s “国産 (domestic)” label was accepted blindly, as if provenance alone guaranteed safety.
The scandal broke when independent researchers traced the app’s codebase and infrastructure. What they found was a case of food fraud: the app was largely outsourced abroad, with foreign modules integrated wholesale. Data was mirrored on overseas servers despite claims of exclusive domestic storage. The “安心安全 (Safe and Secure: a catch‑all slogan meant to reassure without evidence)” promise was revealed as a marketing veneer, a digital version of “産地偽装 (Origin Fraud: the digital equivalent of mislabeling imported beef as wagyū).”
The revelation forced the development consortium, a joint venture of major telecom infrastructure firms, into damage control. Executives issued statements praising the app’s “user experience” and “commitment to Japanese values,” while sidestepping the core issue of provenance. Internally, sources admitted the domestic branding was more rhetorical than technical, designed to capture a public hungry for reassurance rather than evidence.
Security experts were blunt. “Safety is not a matter of geography,” one analyst said. “It is a matter of design, encryption, and governance. Calling an app ‘domestic’ does not make it secure. It makes it marketable.”
Commentators drew parallels to food scandals: “We thought we were consuming wagyū. It turned out to be imported beef in disguise. Now we thought we were downloading a domestic app. It was the same fraud, only digital.”
The “Safe & Secure” rhetoric of domestic apps is a fantasy, detached from the realities of IT security. Provenance is no substitute for proof. In a society scarred by food origin scandals, the public has once again accepted a label without demanding evidence. That raises a question: when will consumers demand substance, not slogans?
