Leaked Location Data Shows Another Muslim Prayer App Tracking Users (vice.com) 51
Joseph Cox, reporting at Vice's Motherboard: One user travelled through a park a few blocks south of an Islamic cultural center. Roughly every two minutes, their phone reported their physical location. Another was next to a bank two streets over from a different mosque. A third person was at a train station, again near a mosque. Perhaps unbeknownst to these people, Salaat First (Prayer Times), an app that reminds Muslims when to pray, was recording and selling their granular location information to a data broker, which in turn sells location data to other clients. Motherboard has obtained a large dataset of those raw, precise movements of users of the app from a source. The source who provided the dataset was concerned that such sensitive information, which could potentially track Muslims going about their day including visiting places of worship, could be abused by those who buy and make use of the data. The company collecting the location data, a French firm called Predicio, has previously been linked to a supply chain of data involving a U.S. government contractor that worked with ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and the FBI.
The news about Salaat First, which has been downloaded more than 10 million times on Android, highlights not only the use of religious apps to harvest location data, but also the ease at which this sensitive information is traded in the location data industry. Motherboard is withholding some specifics about the dataset such as its exact size in order to protect the source, but the significance is clear: users of a Muslim-focused app are being tracked likely without their informed consent. "Being tracked all day provides a lot of information, and it shouldn't be usable against you, especially if you are unaware of it," the source said. Motherboard granted them anonymity to avoid repercussions from their employer.
The news about Salaat First, which has been downloaded more than 10 million times on Android, highlights not only the use of religious apps to harvest location data, but also the ease at which this sensitive information is traded in the location data industry. Motherboard is withholding some specifics about the dataset such as its exact size in order to protect the source, but the significance is clear: users of a Muslim-focused app are being tracked likely without their informed consent. "Being tracked all day provides a lot of information, and it shouldn't be usable against you, especially if you are unaware of it," the source said. Motherboard granted them anonymity to avoid repercussions from their employer.
Well, if you need to face Mecca (Score:4, Insightful)
If you need to face Mecca to pray you need good location data. That's pretty much a given.
And really, if they're using an Android phone they're being tracked six ways from Sunday anyway, so who cares about some random app saving their location?
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Man I remember a time when gods controlled thunder and lightning, these days gods can't even tell if people are facing the correct way when praying. #notmyomnipotentoverlord
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On the contrary, apparently the gods can tell which way you are facing, or it wouldn't be so important to face toward Mecca.
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'Cause gods got nothing better to concern themselves with than when people pray or what direction they face.
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Correct - any deity that takes attendance is pretty darn narcissistic. Sort of like the US's outgoing president.
I mean taking attendance is a good metric for ensuring you're serving your believers. I assume Baby Jesus would be taking my attendance if the GDPR approval form didn't get lost in the mail.
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"'Cause gods got nothing better to concern themselves with than when people pray or what direction they face."
The Christian god, who is apparently everywhere, but still needs you to go to a special building, where the collection plate is located, to pray.
Mmm, location _does_ seem to interest these gods.
Re:Well, if you need to face Mecca (Score:5, Insightful)
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You don't need good location data, unless you are close to Mecca (in which case it's heavily signposted) then just a very vague location, even down to country level, is enough. God does not seem to require sub-1 degree accuracy, and in fact many mosques just fudge it a bit to suit the layout of an existing building they moved into.
Android supports that in its API, apps can ask for an imprecise location or a precise one.
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I've always wondered whether you're supposed to face in the straight line direction, or great circle? And if the former, do you have to compute altitude, or is azimuth sufficient? What if you're at the antipode?
Re:Well, if you need to face Mecca (Score:4, Interesting)
The direction change due to altitude difference between sea level and any earthly altitude is very small unless you are on the ISS or very near Mecca and high up (e.g. flying at airliner cruise altitude near Mecca). In practice it is ignored unless you are on the ISS, so azimuth is considered sufficient.
The ISS case has, unsurprisingly, been analysed in great detail. One can debate whether rules-lawyering edge cases in religious belief and practice is a good use of brainpower, but here is the result in any case: https://www.wired.com/2007/09/... [wired.com]
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Altitude in this context is the angle from horizontal. I guess technically I should have said "elevation" instead. If you're in New York, the elevation required to face Mecca straight-line is -46 degrees, i.e. looking down at the floor.
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Why don't they just build a compass into the prayer mats?
Because compasses point North (Score:2)
Because compasses point North, not towards Mecca.
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So if you're lost in the woods, you can only find your way out if you have to travel due north.
Most of the way around the world, the compass direction you need won't change no matter where you are within dozens if not hundreds of miles of home.
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How did you ever find your way onto slashdot?
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Many of the early advances in the science of topography came from that silly need to point towards Mecca while praying, it's why the Arabs created the first accurate maps outside of China (there were outliers, such as the portolanos, but they were few and far between).
Re: Well, if you need to face Mecca (Score:2)
Fortunately, Mecca doesn't move, so you don't need Internet access for an app like this. Location data w/o Internet access is generally fine.
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You don't need to upload that data, you just need to calculate the device location relative to the known location of mecca and provide the user with the correct direction.
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Not really. Most somewhat educated follower of this creed can do with a compass and rough knowledge where they are. After all smartphones are a lot newer than traveling Muslim.
The ol saying.. (Score:1)
If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
Unless it's microsoft or google, then you're paying for the privilege of being the product.
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since data at the end get collected by NSA, FBI, & c., rather than the product you are the target...
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Why no regulation? (Score:4, Interesting)
I ask, again, why is this deceptive collection and sale of location data not regulated out of existence?
In the USA, of course, it is because regulation in the USA is always weak and ineffective.
But what about in the EU, or Brazil, or other countries with strong consumer and privacy regulation?
Why have the European Commission and European national regulators not jumped on this practice as a blatant breach of GDPR?
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EU: GDPR. That means positive, informed consent (i.e. you have to inform your users precisely what you intend to do) or the makers of such a thing may be hit with a massive fine. Actual implementation is behind though (the GDPR being new), but some massive fines have already happened.
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Likely if you were to read the license agreement the sale of tracking would be nicely obfuscated on Page 43, at which point it's quasi-legal.
Well, obvious target (Score:1)
Religious people are a gullible and easily fooled bunch to begin with, and forgetful religious people who can't remember to look at their watch for their all-important OCD rituals must be even easier to take advantage of.
If I was a malware maker, I'd target that sort of demographic too.
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If I was a malware maker, I'd target that sort of demographic too.
Sad but true. In a sense, these people never grew up. But that means they need special protection and they should get it.
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We've been doing that for the last three generations and look what it got us last Wednesday.
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Well, special protection must also come with special limitations. Children and like-minded ones, for example, cannot own or carry guns. Since "Guns for Morons" is sort of a sacred tradition in the US, that is not going to happen.
Ok, here is an idea: Either no special protection and full rights, or special protection and reduced rights. They get to chose but the choice is final.
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Someone in another forum proposed that when Universal Basic Income becomes a real thing that those living solely on UBI would give up voting rights. The general consensus was that the vast majority would consider that a reasonable deal.
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Someone in another forum proposed that when Universal Basic Income becomes a real thing that those living solely on UBI would give up voting rights. The general consensus was that the vast majority would consider that a reasonable deal.
Well, depending on how difficult it is to get additional employment and how high that UBI is, it may or may not be.
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While I agree that religion is not a good thing to have, I also agree that people that have religion should not be targets for something like this.
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There are reasons why atheists are dramatically underrepresented in prison populations and conservative Christians are over represented, only part of it being that atheists are more intelligent on average and less likely to get caught.
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Consent is strongly implied (Score:2)
The app has location and network permissions which the users consented to.
People need to pay attention to what they're installing.
The app stores should be doing more, and the developer is a tool, but consent was granted.
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People need to pay attention to what they're installing.
People do not understand what they agree to. Just discussed this today with my students (application security) and they had a host of nice negative examples to contribute.
Re: Consent is strongly implied (Score:2)
If you can't understand what location and network permissions do, then maybe you shouldn't be installing any software from vendors you don't know.
Isn't that required? (Score:2)
IIRC, when Muslims pray they are supposed to face towards Mecca, which means that you need to know where they are in order to give them the correct direction. Of course, when someone is sufficiently distant from Mecca, it would always be the same direction, but wouldn't many of the users be in, say, Arabia or other nearby places?
(OTOH, that raises the question of which way a pray-er should face in, say, Nome, Alaska. Or on Mars.)
Re:Isn't that required? (Score:4, Informative)
The basic rule is that if there are crazy timezone issues (The poles, orbit) or severe locational issues (outer space, unable to discern direction), you should do it by the last known location you were in or according to the agreed-upon local time. Facing Mecca is simply done by your best judgment. Same principles apply to Ramadan.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/... [todayifoundout.com]
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The Muslim country with the largest population is Indonesia.