Popular Muslim prayer and Quran app, Muslim Pro as well as a dating app called “Muslim Mingle” have been found to be harvestng location data of users that could be sold to the US military.
The US based online magazine and video channel Motherboard reports that the military collects and buys this information through two streams, which are Babel Street and X-Mode. It says Babel Street creates a product called Locate X, which is linked to a US military branch tasked with carrying out so called special operations abroad.
The other company, X-Mode, is in the business of accessing location data directly from apps. The report says X-Mode sells the private information to a wide range of clients including contractors, and by extension, the military. Motherboard indicates that some apps involved in harvesting fail to disclose this in their privacy policies.
The online magazine points that many of the apps in the supply chain of sensitive data are mostly used by Muslims. Over the past two decades the US has been waging wars on and carrying out assassinations via drones in Muslim majority countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
Header image: Forbes
