Leaked documents have revealed security agencies in the UK and US are harvesting data from smartphone apps such as Angry Birds. The National Security Agency (NSA in the US) and the Government Communications HQ (GCHQ in the UK) has received location information and details including political beliefs and sexual orientation.
The Guardian broke the story which has been uncovered in leaked documents and said it “effectively means that anyone using Google Maps on a smartphone is working in support of a GCHQ system".
GCHQ has declined to comment on the leak as it doesn’t comment on intelligence matters but said all its activities are "authorised, necessary and proportionate".
The British intelligence report explained how to extract users information from their phones through the Angry Birds app. Whilst another document revealed a number of other mobile applications such as Twitter and Facebook which could also be breached.
The NSA did release a statement on the matter which said, "Any implication that NSA's foreign intelligence collection is focused on the smartphone or social media communications of everyday Americans is not true.
"We collect only those communications that we are authorised by law to collect for valid foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes - regardless of the technical means used by the targets."
Can the same be said for UK users? It’s concerning considering Angry Birds is the biggest mobile game in the world, it’s been downloaded 1.7 billion times globally. Then add in applications like Google Maps, Facebook and Twitter and that’s a very large portion of smartphone users. Through these methods governments have access to all of those users' smartphone data.
Snapchat was recently under attack by hackers which accessed the personal information of 4.6 million users through the temporary photo messaging app.
by jamesp via Featured Articles
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