A popular prayer app, Muslim Pro, is receiving massive backlash and negative reviews after a report revealed it was harvesting users’ personal data and selling it to companies connected to the U.S. military.
A report by Vice’s Motherboard exposed how the U.S. military had purchased location data of millions of Muslims across the world.
Muslim Pro has more than 98 million downloads worldwide.
Another app, Muslim Mingle, which has been downloaded 100,000 times also sent data to firms linked to the U.S. military.
Vice’s investigation found out that U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a branch of the military tasked with counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, bought access to user location data to assist on overseas special forces operations.
The US military confirmed the news report.
“Our access to the software is used to support Special Operations Forces mission requirements overseas,” Navy Commander Tim Hawkins was quoted as saying. “We strictly adhere to established procedures and policies for protecting the privacy, civil liberties, constitutional and legal rights of American citizens.”
U.S. military uses parallel streams from two companies X-Mode and Babel Street which obtains location data directly from apps, then sells that data to contractors, and by extension, the military.
After Vice published its report on how the apps are selling personal data, Muslim Pro said it will no longer share data with X-Mode.
Muslim Pro dismissed Motherboard’s report as “incorrect and untrue”.
“We are immediately terminating our relationships with our data partners – including with X-Mode, which started four weeks ago,” Zahariah Jupary, head of community at Muslim Pro told Middle East Eye.
“We will continue to take all necessary measures to ensure that our users practise their faith with peace of mind, which remains Muslim Pro’s sole mission since its creation.”
But many Muslims have begun uninstalling the app, and there are growing campaigns online to ‘cancel’ Muslim Pro.
‘‘This is wild and unacceptable. Download a Quran or prayer app and end up with your data sold to a counterterrorism unit of the US military. No Muslim app should be selling data, especially not like this’’, tweeted prominent scholar Omar Suleiman.
