According to recent reports, agencies in both the US & the UK have targeted Angry Birds, among other things, for mass collection of user data.
This was brought to light by The Guardian, who claim to have gotten the information from the now legendary Edward Snowden.
According to their report, both the NSA and their UK counterpart GCHQ have been targeting Angry Birds and other such popular smartphone apps, in a bid to collect massive amounts of user data as it travels from the device to online servers.
The personal data being transmitted, which is more normally used by publishers and advertisers could contain the make of the device, it’s model and it’s unique ID code, as well as more personal data including age, gender, location, email address, IP address, user name and passwords.
Rovio, the developers behind Angry Birds, have obviously denied these allegations.
“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.”
Rovio’s privacy policy clearly states that;
“collects, stores, and uses your personal information as a data controller in connection with and in order to provide and develop Rovio’s products, mobile applications, services and websites.”
This information obviously would not include highly personal data such as user names, passwords, and so on, but if this report is to be believed, it is exactly this kind of data that has been changing hands. Hmm.
