U.S. military has been buying location information for app collection

According to foreign media reports, the US military is purchasing location information collected through various applications. According to this, while checking whether location information was leaked, some discovered that there were multiple apps targeting Muslims, such as prayer apps for Muslims that are downloaded more than 98 million times.

There are two major routes for sales of location information for the U.S. military, identified through app developer coverage. One is through a service called Location X sold by a company called Babel Street. LOCATEX provides location information to the U.S. military through the sale of access to the U.S. Special Operations Command USSOCOM, which is in charge of anti-terrorism special reconnaissance in the U.S. military.

Babel Street claims that the data its services collect is completely anonymized. However, an employee from here testified that the fact that LOKATEX is anonymous is like play. USSOCOM purchased an additional software license for LocateX from Babel Street, and other services, such as Babel X, which specialize in text analysis, appear in public records.

In response to this point, USSOCOM stated that the authority devised at Locate X is being used to support the mission of special operations forces operating abroad. They answered that they are strictly following.

Meanwhile, one expert pointed out that it appears to be virtually certain that foreign companies are attempting to abuse such data.

The second path for distributing location information to the US military is a company called X-Mode. The company acquires location information directly from several smartphone apps and sells the data to the military through a broker. Among the apps that X-Mode uses to collect location information, there are Muslim Mingle, a dating app for Muslims, and Muslim Pro, an app that displays directions to Mecca. Muslim Pro emphasizes that it is the most popular Islamic app on the official site, and has over 50 million downloads on Google Play Store and over 98 million downloads on other platforms such as iOS.

In addition, various apps such as Accupedo, a pedometer app, CPlus for Craigslist, and Global Storms, a typhoon or hurricane tracking app, send information to X-Mode.

The CEO of a software company, who said the app it developed sent data to X-Mod, said that X-Mod was cooperating with the military because it was not stated anywhere that X-Mod did not know that it was selling data to the military. He answered that he could not know.

An app targeting Muslims is part of the main channel, saying that the U.S. military, accused of using location information purchased from others in a drone attack, is buying access to personal information such as companies for selling location information to the military through such an opaque route. It is pointed out that it is noteworthy given that the US military has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians during decades of warfare in the Middle East against Islamic terrorist groups. Related information can be found here .