Your Apps are Spying on You - Edward Snowden

A report published in The New York Times, The Guardian, and ProPublica claims that Angry Birds and Google Maps are being used as a spying tool to collect user information. This claim has made on the basis of documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Report claims that National Security Agency (NSA) of U.S.A and Britain's Government Communications Headquarter (GCHQ) were cooperating to each other by 2007 in order to collect user information from smart phone Apps.

The agencies have traded methods for collecting location data from a user of Google Maps and for gathering address books, buddy lists, phone logs and geographic data embedded in photos when a user posts to the mobile versions of Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and other services, the Times said.

The NSA and GCHQ are able to tap into that metadat to collect a wealth of key data points about a person’s life, including age, gender, marital status (“Options include single, married, divorced, swinger and more,” The Guardian said), income, education level and more.

Angry Birds maker Rovio said it had no knowledge of any NSA or GCHQ programs or mechanisms for tapping into its users’ data.

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