App reminding Muslims when to pray selling location data on to third parties

An app that reminds Muslims when to pray, shows nearby mosques and determines the direction of Makkah has been tracking users’ location and selling their information on, reveals a new report by Vice.

Salaat First, which has been downloaded more than ten million times onto Android, sold the information of its users to a data broker which would sell it on to other clients.

The data shows the latitude and longitude of the user, their phone model, operating system, IP address and timestamp.

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French firm Predicio, which was collecting the data, has previously sold data to a US government contractor that worked with law enforcement agencies, including Customs and Border Protection and the FBI.

The Salaat First available on iOS does not sell its data on to Predicio, according to the investigation.

Vice reports that the app does not mention that it is selling users’ location data which mean the people who download it have not given informed consent for them to do this.

Muslim Pro, another app, has also had its location’s data sold to X-Mode Social which sells products to the US military through contractors.

Following a separate Vice investigation into this app, Apple and Google banned X-Mode from their app stores.