Government Contractor Embedded Software in 500+ Mobile Apps to Spy on Users

[dufus]

 

A Virginia-based federal contractor has been using more than 500 mobile applications to track unwitting Americans, according to a Friday report.

 

Anomaly Six LLC has installed its proprietary software kit, or SDK, on hundreds of unnamed applications, according to the report in The Wall Street Journal. App makers allow companies to pay to install the software on their apps in order to track customers. The companies generally sell the data for advertisers to use in targeting customers.

 

The company denied providing the data to the U.S. government, despite holding what it described as “unclassified but confidential” contracts with federal agencies.

 

The company was founded by Jeffrey Heinz and Brandan Huff, Army veterans who left another Virginia company specializing in electronic surveillance, Babel Street, in 2018. Huff, a former counterintelligence officer, handled Babel Street’s contracts with the Defense Department, while Heinz oversaw the Justice Department and U.S. Cyber Command.

 

Reports over the last several years have described Babel Street’s “Locate X” product, which enables the company to track smartphone users using commercial data drawn from their applications. Government entities including the FBI and U.S. Army have shelled out millions to Babel Street on federal contracts, the terms of which have never been disclosed.

 

A 2018 lawsuit filed against Anomaly Six by Babel Street alleged the new company had developed a new product to compete with Locate X. The suit was settled on undisclosed terms in 2019.

 

The report comes a day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, and Tencent’s WeChat to prohibit American companies from conducting business with either entity. The administration has made the case that ByteDance and Tencent — both headquartered in China — siphon user data in unprecedented ways, and that the Chinese government can too easily use the information to spy on users around the world.

 

It isn’t clear how many federal agencies have contracts with Anomaly Six and Babel Streets, according to public documents, nor is it clear how many applications they are using to harvest user data.

 

“Anomaly Six isn’t listed in any public spending contracts, and many of Babel Street’s sales to government entities aren’t reflected in public documents either,” the Journal noted.

 

“Anomaly Six said its contracts with the U.S. government were unclassified but confidential, and that it couldn’t reveal which agencies it was working with without permission from those agencies.”

 

[funkyy]

This HAS to be against people's Civil Rights. It's spying pure and simple.

Imagine if a citizen planted a tracker/camera/microphone in a  boardroom..

...the owners/directors would be squealing blue murder and threatening all

kinds of legal action. Another example of "Rules for us, rules for them".

[Karlston]

Moved from General News.

 

App spying fits better here.

[straycat19]

16 hours ago, funkyy said:

This HAS to be against people's Civil Rights.

 

No it isn't.  Note that it is embedded in apps and before you install an app you are supposed to check its legal statements, because you are agreeing to whatever it says when you install it.  And if an app asks for permission to access something it doesn't really seem to need access to, then a smart person would deny and uninstall.  Just because people don't open their eyes doesn't make it a violation of their civil rights.  Too bad there isn't an app to fix stupid. 

[funkyy]

It's still sneaky. Yes we're supposed to check all the small print but really how much time would we spend

reading license/user details/official bumf inside products/insurance policies etc etc.

It SHOULD be TRANSPARENT and UPFRONT, not buried inside.

On their advertising point of sale companies splurge in BIG letters detailing screen size, image quality,

hardware specs, etc etc...they should also add the details about their tracking spyware if they really

believe people will still still buy the product knowing that.🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[mp68terr]

29 minutes ago, funkyy said:

... they should also add the details about their tracking spyware if they really

believe people will still still buy the product knowing that ...

They should, they could, but they don't do it.

How many people know that an app they use is spying on them?

All involved users should then get rid of m$oft and google apps, to cite a few.