An investigative report revealed that the US military bought user data from multiple Islamic apps including Muslim Pro, which is widely known as the best Islamic app. Other contaminated Islamic apps also include two popular ones; Quran app and Muslim dating app.
Muslim Pro has over 98 million downloads. It gives prayer timing notification along with reading material from the Quran.
What Is Best Islamic App Muslin Pro Doing?
While seemingly providing “Islamic” services, it is also tracking the location of users and selling it to different data brokers. Reportedly, US military bought the data of app’s users from one of those brokers. It is not only Muslim Pro, hundreds of apps are making money by selling user data to third-party data brokers.
This revelation has further infuriated privacy advocates while firms and their partners continue to insist that online human movement is anonymized and does not directly linked to their actual identity. However, many studies have shown that it is easy to de-anonymize the location data and identify the individual behind numbers.
These 5 best security tips can help in preventing apps from stealing user data.
How US Military Is Obtaining Location Data?
According to the original investigative report, U.S. military uses two separate but parallel data streams to get location data.
One stream is through a company called X-Mode. It obtains location data directly from apps and then sells it to brokers; who then sell it to the US military.
Other stream depends on a company called Babel Street, which manufactures Locate X. U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) bought access to Locate X to assist on some “special forces” operation overseas. This branch of US military is tasked with counterterrorism and special reconnaissance. The app allows USSOCOM investigators to draw a digital boundary around the target address and pinpoint all mobile devices within the boundary. Then they can see where each device has traveled in a given time period which goes back months.
Muslim Pro Ends Relationship With Contractors
Reportedly, Muslim Pro which seems the best Islamic app in term of a huge number of downloads canceled their contract with the third-party broker who allegedly sold the user data to the US military
https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1328752439206490114
Muslim pro ended this partner after VICE Media Group’s Motherboard publicized the story.
The issue is making US establishment more controversial. In the last few years the United States is doing a crackdown against the Chinese companies and apps like TikTok for reasons related to the data security. Meanwhile, controversies related to the United States engaging itself in users data breach continue to emerge.
