• Data Protection

  Second prayer app caught harvesting user location data

  Posted by Mohammed Alhada on 12 January 2021 at 1:49 pm

  Second prayer app caught harvesting user location data may have snitched on Muslims to ICE and the FBI.

  A popular Muslim prayer app has been secretly collecting its users’ location data, according to Vice. A network of data brokers links the app to US government law enforcement agencies such as ICE and the FBI.

  The app called Salaat First (Prayer Times) was created to help Muslims perform their daily prayers, reminding when the time for the ritual has come, identifying the direction they need to take to face Mecca, and showing the location of nearby mosques. The latter feature requires identifying location data.

  According to data leaked to Vice’s Motherboard website, the app went further than simply identifying where the user was, however. Until recently, it also shared that data with a broker, which sold the information on to other interested parties. The broker, a French firm called Predicio, is part of a what Vice claims is a shady data supply chain that had earlier been identified by the outlet. Among the chain’s clients are US law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

  Vice had previously exposed Muslim Pro, another app aimed at Muslim users, which tracked user locations and sold the data to the US military, including the US Special Operations Command. Admittedly, Salaat First has a smaller user base – the Android version of Salaat First, which had been collecting the data, has been downloaded more than 10 million times, whereas MuslimPro had racked up over 100 million downloads by the time it was outed.

  Mohammed Alhada replied 3 years, 8 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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