Some of the world’s most popular apps are likely being co-opted by rogue members of the advertising industry to harvest sensitive location data on a massive scale, with that data ending up with a location data company whose subsidiary has previously sold global location data to US law enforcement.
The thousands of apps, included in hacked files from location data company Gravy Analytics, include everything from games like Candy Crush and dating apps like Tinder to pregnancy tracking and religious prayer apps across both Android and iOS. Because much of the collection is occurring through the advertising ecosystem—not code developed by the app creators themselves—this data collection is likely happening without users’ or even app developers’ knowledge.
“For the first time publicly, we seem to have proof that one of the largest data brokers selling to both commercial and government clients appears to be acquiring their data from the online advertising ‘bid stream,’” rather than code embedded into the apps themselves, Zach Edwards, senior threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Silent Push and who has followed the location data industry closely, tells 404 Media after reviewing some of the data.
