Eight responded: A-Life Software, LLC (“Stock Trainer: Virtual Trading ”) Difer (“Simple weather & clock widget ”) Neon Roots (“CatWang”) JRustonApps B.V. The Markup reached out to all of the app publishers in the dataset for comment.
Both have a large install base-the Android version of Tango has been installed more than 100 million times, and Perfect365 has more than 50 million installs according to their current Google Play app pages. The most popular apps in the sample we reviewed were the live streaming service Tango and Perfect 365, a virtual makeup app. X-Mode, Outlogic, and Digital Envoy did not respond to multiple requests for comment.īecause it turns out moving fast and breaking things broke some super important things. Two former X-Mode employees told The Markup that the company’s data collection capabilities were at their peak in 20 and significantly dropped after the public backlash. location data going to military contractors, but the company is still involved in the location data industry, albeit on what appears to be a smaller scale. The new owners said they cut off all U.S. population monthly.” But on Outlogic’s current website, it claims only to have up to “10%+ of the adult U.S. On X‑Mode’s old website-which is still up- the company boasted that more than 400 app publishers supplied the company with people’s exact whereabouts and said that X‑Mode’s data included “25%+ of the Adult U.S. In August, the intellectual property intelligence firm Digital Envoy acquired the company and rebranded it as Outlogic. The Bro App’s founder, Scott Kutler, told The Markup in an email that the company no longer provides X‑Mode with any user location data.Ĭhart by Joel Eastwood and Gabriel Hongsdusit. Tango, Perfect365, and the developers of the Muslim prayer apps did not respond to our requests for comment.
The dataset points to dozens of apps, including four additional Muslim prayer apps that sold location data to X-Mode in 2019: “ Qibla Locator: Prayer Times, Azan, Quran & Qibla,” “ Full Quran MP3 – 50+ Languages & Translation Audio,” “ Al Quran Mp3 – 50 Reciters & Translation Audio,” and “ Prayer Times: Qibla & Quran.” It also shows that X-Mode received location data from more sensitive sources than previously known. While the data The Markup obtained is not up-to-date and doesn’t contain a complete list of apps that supplied location data to X-Mode, it highlights the scale and variety of the location data broker’s sources right before the company faced major public scrutiny following Motherboard’s report. It’s not clear which apps, specifically, benefited military contractors. military contractors, potentially putting Muslims who used these apps at risk of surveillance.
And last year, Motherboard reported that X‑Mode purchased location data from the Muslim prayer apps “Muslim Pro,” “Prayer Times: Qibla Compass, Quran MP3 & Azan,” “Qibla Finder: Prayer Times, Quran MP3 & Azan,” and “Qibla Compass-Prayer Times, Quran MP3 & Azan.” Motherboard also revealed that X‑Mode had supplied location data to U.S. The Markup recently identified the family safety app Life360 as one of the biggest suppliers of precise location data, selling data to about a dozen companies, including X‑Mode. Generally, location data brokers are loath to disclose the sources of their data, which comes from smartphone applications that ask users to share their location with the apps. The app is a major source of raw location data for a multibillion-dollar industry that buys, packages, and sells people’s movements Decem08:00 ET The Popular Family Safety App Life360 Is Selling Precise Location Data on Its Tens of Millions of Users