No, 7-year-old Eli Moreno wasn’t abducted after playing the Talking Angela app

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
@

 @grahamcluley.com
 @[email protected]

As if there wasn’t enough nonsense being said about the “Talking Angela” smartphone app, with chain letters that spread claiming (falsely) that it is a cover for paedophiles, or yours truly receiving phone calls from concerned mothers who have (mistakenly) concluded that I am the app’s creator…

Now a sick “humour” website has spread an untrue story, claiming that a seven-year-old boy has gone missing after his mother installed the Talking Angela app onto her iPhone.

Hoax article about Talking Angela

The hoax story reads:

7 Year Old Eli Moreno Missing After Installing Talking Angela App

DALLAS – Thursday morning Jasmin Moreno installed the popular app Talking Angela on her iPhone for her 7 year old son Eli Moreno to play with she noticed the Talking Angela app was asking questions that seemed very odd the Talking Angela app asked “Are your parents home?” and even went as far as asking “What are you wearing right now?” at the time she didn’t suspected that a child molester was on the other side of the app communicating with her young son Eli.

Friday morning she let Eli play with her phone while she showered by the time she was ready to drive Eli to school he was missing. She reported him missing 1 hour later and a detective asked her if she had the “Talking Angela” app on her phone she was stunned to find out that several kids in the same neighborhood have gone missing days after installing the app. Huzlers talked to a local detective and he told us “We have been tracking the Angela Pedophile for days now he’s like a shadow” we are assuming this news hasn’t been made public to keep app users from panicking.

Its sounds like a horrific story.

However, it is utter balderdash.

Sign up to our free newsletter.
Security news, advice, and tips.

But that’s not stopping some people from sharing the story via social networks like Facebook, helping to perpetuate the myths about the Talking Angela app.

Article being shared on Facebook

Sigh… Hoaxes would find it a lot harder to breath if people were a little more skeptical of what they read online, and asked themselves if the source is reliable.

After all, Huzlers, the website hosting this false news story, recently published a clearly untrue article claiming that McDonalds was not just serving human meat… but the meat of human children.

The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) has seized McDonald’s production and shipping and will call for more meat factory inspections and restaurant inspections. The FBI is also investigating the factories. FBI agent Lloyd Harrison told Huzler reporters “The worst part is that it’s not only human meat, it’s child meat. the body parts that were found across the U.S. factories were deemed to small to be adult body parts, this is truly horrible”.

Clearly Huzlers is hardly the kind of news outlet you should trust.

If only folks checked their facts before sharing links with all of their online friends. Unfortunately it seems that common sense just isn’t that common.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "The AI Fix" and "Smashing Security" podcasts. Follow him on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, or drop him an email.

20 comments on “No, 7-year-old Eli Moreno wasn’t abducted after playing the Talking Angela app”

  1. Jamie Tyler

    And nobody noticed at the top of the Huzlers webpage "Valentines Day Tragedy:Teen Masturbated 56 Times Straight Before Dying"?

  2. marina

    But how do you explain the shadow in the eyes of Angela? Even in the pictures to describe the game quickly “play store”, we see very clearly a shadow ..

    1. Graham CluleyGraham Cluley · in reply to marina

      Don't you find it more plausible that the developers put a reflection in the cat's eye (she is supposed to be sitting opposite you in a Parisian restaurant after all) than that it's a paedo phone lurking inside your iPhone?

      1. Natali · in reply to Graham Cluley

        You are lying everyone chekI check the eyes you don't believe me you just lost many kids I know who eli 7 years old and Jessica know you are lying I can see your eye literally and it's you your home and everything

    2. ThinkAboutIt · in reply to marina

      You're just participating in the mass hysteria and imagining things. How far we have come… people being afraid of a virtual shadow of a street in Paris.

      1. Baylee · in reply to ThinkAboutIt

        I do not play this game but when i have kids they will not play this game😡👎

        1. Paul · in reply to Baylee

          Good job my sister got missing by playing the app joking x

    3. Wasil · in reply to marina

      That is true and when you give Angela a present the camera flashes so there is someone defiantly behind there . The best thing is to delete the app and make sure nobody comes on it because we all know the consequences for this mistake

  3. Mark

    Ok ok ok so ur saying that there is no guy in angelas eyes listen I SAW it and I had for star my iPad from that fking app but didn't they find the owner

  4. gady

    How can it be the reflection when I took a picture and zoom in it wasn't a Guy it a place bit it asked me weird question about. Zayne from 1D.I was a little afraid so I delete it also i cover my camer it said please remove ur hand from the camera.NOT FAKE THAT HAPPEN T O MY FRIEND

  5. M.R.

    Yes yes sir. You claim that there is no such thing as a paedo behind the eyes of the cat. Could it be the fact that you're hiding something confidential that YOU sir keep denying and continuously say it's just a mere reflection of the player.
    Yet, scouting closely at the left eye; you can see a male figure. It's not the same person but still a male.
    Now explain that sir.
    After having experimenting with several girls and a few boys. There does not show the reflection of all the females that encountered this app.

    1. Kaitlyn Dross · in reply to M.R.

      I totally agree. Not just boys/men play this game, also this game is meant for children and teens but mostly for young children. No one might ever know what is going on if you can't track down this "Pedophile". The company that made the game might not even know if the game has been hacked because hackers are so sneaky and secretive we may never know who this "pedophile" is or where he lives.

    2. Anonymous · in reply to M.R.

      Then how can there be millions of people on this app talking Angela and have some weird pedo talking to them all at once? I don't think outfit 7 would hire over a million pedophiles to look and find people's names and ages

  6. emily

    it is so not true the eyes on evrey single photo is the same why?

  7. Go Girl

    You are the crappiest website how can you do that you sick,sick someone should get you I hope you go to jail cuz your a piece of crap.

  8. Hind

    Creepy I don't know that game little 7 years old has gone missing sad *don't download*

  9. Hind

    I can't even see it in the eyes but known I found out

  10. Faith

    i was playing talking angela when she was asking me weird questions like what do u eat, whats ur age, and even she asked "are you wearing blue right now….. it was so weird and when i saw the true story…………….you do not wanna no….. :(

  11. Faith

    Also tell me why the old angela game looks more creepy ER than angela 2…….. also the profile scares me……. she always asks me *can u hear me* and she asked me DIS……… *can you tell me ur number thats not it….. no no no after i said no i closed the game and went to the mall at 10:00 pm when i get a call on my phone saying… sucpeted scam… it was in PINK too it was so scary and when i got home it called me again….. :(((( dont download pls for ur familys im deleteing dis game bro…………

  12. STG32

    Talking Angela Hoax is just a hoax, completely false. Don't believe anything on the internet you see!

What do you think? Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.