Angry Birds and other "leaky apps" gather data for the NSA

Sure, Angry Birds seems like just a game that lets you kill some time by trying to complete progressively harder levels of pig destruction. But according to Edward Snowden, the app does more than kill time. Snowden has turned over documents that state that the NSA and Britain's GCHQ are using Angry Birds and other so-called "leaky apps" to collect personal data. This is done through the photo and location sharing and other permissions found on many apps.

Angry Bird's developer Rovio has already denied any involvement in the spying and says that it is unaware that it is taking place. The permissions and the information sharing is supposed to help improve the game and better serve the consumer by delivering ads that have some relevance to the location of the game player.

The New York Times recently reported that both spy agencies have been swapping techniques for obtaining location from apps and address books since 2007. Since then, smartphones have become more commonplace and the information available for spy agencies to remove, has grown immensely. Right now, information supposedly being taken from these apps includes age, gender, marital status and sexual orientation.

While the information gleaned from the spying doesn't seem like it could reveal an individual person's name, both the NSA and GCHQ are said to be able to put together profiles of targeted users from the little bits and pieces of information taken from these leaky apps.

The NSA, for its part, has released a statement denying that it spies on "everyday Americans" and says that its activities in this field are limited to "communications that we are authorized by law to collect for valid foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes."

source: AndroidAuthority