Are they angry birds are spying birds.
Angry birds is one of the top most smartphone games played across the world. It has large number of players, at least 70% of smartphone users playing Angry birds. What if it leaks your personal data to NSA.
According to the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, that the national security agency and GCHQ, have been working to develop ways to access personal data through so called 'leaky Apps' like Angry Birds, apparently transmit your personal information over the internet insecurely.
So, what kind of data? It can include very personal and information. According to the Guardian, "users’ most sensitive information such as sexual orientation – and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences such as whether or not the user may be a swinger."
When a smartphone user uploads a photo to social media like Facebook and Twitter these apps may provide data about your phone types as well as your location.
They have a lot of information about us since our social media profile publish dates including where we live, marital status, sexual orientation, education and information about our families and friends. This is what NSA can collect via these leaky apps.
According to the documents by Snowden, personal information is also collected by advertising agencies that serve ads on mobile devices. An advertising firm that has partnered with Angry birds maker Rovio for certain edition of games to get particularly rich informations.
Rovio VP of marketing and communication said that "Rovio doesn't have any previous knowledge of this matter, and have not been aware of such activity in 3rd party advertising networks. Nor do we have any involvement with the organizations you mentioned."
GCHQ analytics used the Google Maps to collect the location data. It means that anyone using Google Maps on a smartphone is working in support of this system. Android smartphone users may be at higher risk from this kind of data collection. While IOS often allows user to disallow apps from accessing their personal informations like photos and location. Android users have to agree all permissions I order to download an app.
But what Rovio said was.
“The alleged surveillance may be conducted through third party advertising networks used by millions of commercial websites and mobile applications across all industries,” the company said. “If advertising networks are indeed targeted, it would appear that no internet-enabled device that visits ad-enabled websites or uses ad-enabled applications is immune to such surveillance. Rovio does not allow any third party network to use or hand over personal end-user data from Rovio’s apps.”
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