These 5 Muslim Applications Are Suspected Selling User Location Data To The FBI

User data privacy illustration (Photo by Franck on Unsplash)

JAKARTA - As technology develops, new methods of espionage or spying have also developed. Even smartphone users don't realize it.

Recently, a technology company, which is tasked with collecting and processing data, discovered a Muslim application called Salaat First which is said to be selling its user information to a United States government contractor.

It is known that the development company sold some of its user data to a French partner company called Predicio. Furthermore, the firm sells available data to US government agencies - including the FBI and ICE, as well as Customs and Border Protection.

Salaat First is a prayer reminder application that has been downloaded by more than 10 million users on Android phones. In order to run the service, the application requests access to various types of data from the device. Starting from location data, storage, device IP, to the network.

"The tracking goes on throughout the day provides many kinds of information, and should not be used to your detriment, especially if you are not aware of it", explained a confidential source contacted by Vice.

5 Religious Applications

This incident marks how easy it is for religious applications to harvest data. Also, how sensitive user information is easily traded.

Based on the Motherboard trials, which bought and obtained the data, owners could easily track the location and activity of certain users. Through the screen, clearly displayed the location of the user - whose cellphone sends location data every two minutes.

Unbeknownst to the user, the Salaat First (Prayer Times) application is able to record and sell the user's location (which is displayed in dots on the screen).

The news about the leak of Salaat First is not the first. Throughout January, the media discovered a number of religious apps that were caught collecting and selling sensitive data belonging to their users. For example, Muslim Pro, who was also caught selling users' location data to a company called X-Mode Social.

After the tracing that was done by Motherboard, it was discovered that the company was selling the data that they collected to the United States military via contractors. After Motherboard reported the news, Apple and Google also blocked X-Mode from their respective application stores.

Now, based on the latest report from Vice, Google has sent a warning letter to the Salaat First application developer. The alert contains an order to remove the location code from Predicio within seven days.

If the warning is not carried out, Google will be forced to remove the Salaat First application from the Play Store. When the VOI team searched the Play Store, Indonesian Android phone users still found this application. On the Play Store page, the application developed by Hicham Boushaba has a rating of 4.7.

Meanwhile, similar applications have been removed from the App Store. However, Vice gave a warning that there were still several similar religious applications that were allegedly selling user data.

The new religious application that replaces the old service is called "Prayer Times: Qibla Compass, Quran MP3 & Azan"; "Qibla Finder: Prayer Times, Quran MP3 & Azan"; "Qibla Compass - Prayer Times, Quran MP3 & Azan".

The Qibla Compass application in Indonesia changes its name to "Qibla - Ramadan 2020, Times, Prayers, Al-Quran". This application has been downloaded by 5 million users and has a rating of 4.4 on the Play Store.