Last Updated on 17/11/2020 by TheDigitalHacker
Muslim Pro, a prayer application with 98 million downloads which remises the consumer about day-to-day prayers and supplies the teachings from the Holy Quran. The company which has formulated this app has been shouting it as “The Most Plausible Muslim Applications”.
It also traces consumer’s location data and vends out the data to other agents, contractors, or intermediaries, and the US Military Force is one of the major clients or buyers, in pursuance of a fresh report from Vice’s Motherboard.
This application, Muslim Pro, is one of those hundreds of Smartphone applications that earn money by selling consumers’ location data to arbitrator agents or brokers. The United States Armed Forces purchased the app’s data via one of its third-party agents, according to Vice’s report. This custom has uplifted the anger of seclusion of consumers’ data, but location data companies and their associates emphasize that the public’s actions are unidentified or unknown and not directly attached to their recognition or individuality. Although, some research has demonstrated that it’s simple to reveal the identity of the consumers through its location data.
The fresh investigation or report is the up to date example of how the administrative organizations or agencies can go to individual data agents or brokers to accumulate grainy details on the activities of any individual person, which also comprises the citizens of the United States. Some legislators called for the practice to be more exhaustingly standardized after it was declared that the Department of Homeland Security purchased the location data to trace those people suspected of invalidly or illegally migrating to the United States.
The app, Muslim Pro, sold out the location data to an arbitrator agent or broker which is also known as X-Mode, as described in the Vice’s report. X-Mode has sold out the location data to safeguard contractors, which sequentially supplies data to the United States Department of Defense, as described by the Vice’s website.
The company X-Mode stated to the Vice’s Motherboard Website that it’s trading with armed forces contractors is “mainly concentrated on three matters: counter-terrorism, web security or cyber security, and predicting forthcoming COVID-19 hotspots.”
In other cases, the United States Armed Forces has bought location data straight away from the agents or brokers instead of going through the defense contractors. In accordance with the public acquisition records, the United States Special Operations spent around $90,656 in April to acquire the location data supplied by the company Babel Street, which excavates the data from the application.
Tim Hawkins who is the United States Special Operations representative said in an interview,” We rigidly follow the traditional course of actions and strategies to defend the seclusion or privacy, civilian rights, constitutional and legitimate power of American townsmen.”
Babel Street undersells a product which is known as Locate X which permits the individual to choose a region on a map and demonstrate the motion of the appliances or devices within that area, as stated by the website. In pursuance of the Babel Street trading documentation, Users can do as many search operations as they demand after the complete settlement to acquire or access the location data.
The purchases of the data are renowned as the Pentagon has formerly utilized Smartphone location data so that they can plan and accomplish the military tasks. The National Security Agency utilized various location data from the cell phone’s SIM Cards to implement drone attacks against suspicious Taliban members. It is still obscure whether the location data bought via third-party or arbitrator agents has straight away informed the United States Armed Force Operations specifically.
