How the Muslim Pro application sells our personal data to the U.S. military

Muslim Pro, a Muslim prayer application with more than 98 million downloads, is one of the applications connected to a vast supply chain that sends the personal data of ordinary people to brokers, contractors and the military, Vice magazine reveals.

Applications that send data to X-Mode include Muslim Pro, an application that reminds users when to pray and in what direction Mecca is in relation to the user’s current location. The application has been downloaded more than 50 million times on Android, according to the Google Play Store, and more than 98 million in total on other platforms, including iOS, according to the Muslim Pro website.

“The most popular Muslim application! “reads the Muslim Pro website. The application also includes passages and audio readings from the Quran. Another application that sent data to X-Mode was Muslim Mingle, a dating application that has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

The purchase of this information by U.S. law enforcement has raised questions about whether authorities are buying their location data, which may normally require an access warrant. But the USSOCOM contract and the additional reports are the first evidence that the purchase of location data in the United States has spread from law enforcement to military agencies.

The motherboard used network analysis software to observe the Android and iOS versions of the Muslim Pro application by repeatedly sending granular location data to the X-Mode endpoint. Will Strafach, an iOS researcher and founder of Guardian, said he also saw the iOS version of Muslim Pro sending location data to X-Mode.

The data transfer also included the name of the wireless network the phone was currently connected to, a timestamp and information about the phone such as its model, according to Motherboard tests.

The U.S. military buys granular motion data from people around the world, collected from seemingly harmless applications, Motherboard learned. The most popular application among a group of motherboards analyzed and connected to this type of data sale is Muslim Pro, which has more than 98 million downloads worldwide.

Others include a Muslim dating application, a popular Craigslist application, a storm tracking application, and a “level” application that can be used to help, for example, set up shelves in a room.

Through public records, developer interviews, and technical analysis, Motherboard discovered two separate and parallel data streams that the U.S. military uses or has used to obtain location data.

One is based on a company called Babel Street, which creates a product called Locate XUS Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a branch of the military responsible for counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and special reconnaissance purchased access to Locate X to assist special forces operations overseas. The other flow goes through a company called X-Mode, which obtains location data directly from applications and then sells it to subcontractors and, by extension, the military.

The news highlights the opaque location data industry and the fact that the U.S. military, which has sadly used other location data to target UAV strikes, is buying access to sensitive data. Many users of applications involved in the data supply chain are Muslim, which is remarkable given that the U.S. has waged a decades-long war against Muslim-majority terrorist groups in the Middle East and has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in its wars with military operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The motherboard is not aware of any specific operation in which this type of application-based location data has been used by the U.S. military.

Muslim Pro has not responded to several requests for feedback.

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