In an investigation by the online magazine Motherboard, it was reported that the U.S. military has been purchasing and gathering location data from many apps.
And most notably in this case, also from apps that are created for Muslims.
The most popular app among them was the Muslim prayer and Qur'an app 'Muslim Pro', which has more than 98 million downloads worldwide. Others included the 'Muslim Mingle', a dating app that has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.
The investigation from Motherboard was based on public records, interviews with developers, and technical analysis.
This was confirmed by the military, when Navy Commander Tim Hawkins was quoted as saying:
According to Motherboard, a media platform within Vice Media, Muslim Pro had sold its user location data to X-Mode, a data broker which "provides the highest quality location data in near real-time to help companies accurately determine visitation, mobility, and the context around visits and movement."
Back in April, X-Mode CEO Joshua Anton, said that X-Mode tracks 25 million devices inside the U.S. every month and 40 million elsewhere - including in the European Union, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region.
It was X-mode that then allegedly sold Muslim Pro's user data to third-party contractors, which in turn subsequently gave it to the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a branch of the military tasked with counterterrorism, counterinsurgency and special reconnaissance.
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden also confirmed the news to Motherboard's request, saying that X-Mode did sell the alleged data to other “U.S. military customers”.
X-Mode however defended the practice.
“X-Mode licenses its data panel to a small number of technology companies that may work with government military services, but our work with such contractors is international and primarily focused on three use cases: counter-terrorism, cyber-security and predicting future COVID-19 hotspots,” X-Mode told the online magazine.
X-Mode has in the past published anonymized location data from people's smartphones to show people's movements.
Following the revelation, despite saying that Motherboard's report as "incorrect and untrue", Muslim Pro told Middle East Eye that it had severed all ties with X-Mode.
"We are immediately terminating our relationships with our data partners - including with X-Mode, which started four weeks ago," said Zahariah Jupary, Project Manager and Head of Community at Muslim Pro.
He did this in respect for the millions of its Muslims users who use the app.
"We will continue to take all necessary measures to ensure that our users practice their faith with peace of mind, which remains Muslim Pro’s sole mission since its creation."
Jupary also said that Muslim Pro had launched an internal investigation into the situation, and was in the process of reviewing its "data governing policy to confirm that all user data was handled in line with all existing requirements".
Muslim Pro is a prayer app and more.
With over 98 million downloads, the app reminds its users about daily prayers and provides readings from the Qur'an. The company calls itself "The most popular Muslim app" due to the many features it offers.
Following the Motherboard story, thousands of users took the case to social media to condemn the app, with some deleting the app in protest.
The news highlights how the industry works behind people's back, and revealing the fact that the U.S. military, which has infamously used other location data to target drone strikes, is doing what it can to acquire sensitive data.
Muslims are notable in this case, considering that the U.S. has waged decades-long war on predominantly Muslim terror groups.
According to Pew Research Center, Islam is the second largest religion by population in the world, accounting to more than 23% or almost 2 billion people, coming second to only Christianity.
But to most of the world, most notably to the West, Islam is a minority. More than often, people who embrace Islam in Christian-majority countries, are subjected to xenophobia and racism.
Motherboard's investigation also found other apps relaying location data include a step-counter app called Accupedo, the weather app Global Storms, and CPlus for Craigslist.
Some of the app developers Motherboard spoke to were not aware who their users' location data ends up with.
It should be noted that developers, location data companies, brokers and their partners insist that people's movements are anonymized and not directly tied to their identities. However, de-anonymizing that kind of data is possible, allowing parties to tie the data back to individual people.