A new research report from @seanodiggity and @expressvpn in honor #DataPrivacyDay reveals the incredible extent of commercial location tracking hidden in everyday apps.

https://www.expressvpn.com/digital-security-lab/investigation-xoth

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App vendors use free software development kits (SDKs) to build their products, not realizing (or not caring) that the SDKs come from commercial surveillance companies that harvest all their users' data and sell it in hidden, sprawling commercial markets.

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That's how the US military was able to buy location data on users of a Muslim prayer app: the app was built with one of these surveillance SDKs, so the data was extracted, packaged and sold on the cheap to the Pentagon.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqm5x/us-military-location-data-xmode-locate-x

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The survey encompasses 450 apps with 1.7b downloads. It found that messenger apps (including many masquerading as Wechat, FB Messenger, and Telegram) were rife with location tracking. Other major offenders include dating and social apps.

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The sleaziest vendors are also the most prolific. X-Mode (a company theoretically banned from app stores) is in 44% of the analyzed apps. X-Mode is especially prevalent in religious apps, especially Islamic ones.

Other prominent offenders include Oneaudience and Quadrant.

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The researchers did me the honor of naming their report Project Xoth - Xoth is the name of one of the sinister commercial surveillance companies in Attack Surface, the third Little Brother book.

http://attacksurface.com 

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