The National Security Agency is collecting data from mobile apps and games such as Angry Birds and Google Maps, according to documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Personal information from "leaky" apps can reveal a user's location, age, sex, marital status and even sexual preference, according to the documents published by the Guardian.
NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), have been working together on how to collect vast amounts of data from smartphone apps since 2007, the New York Times reported.
The agencies share techniques on how to collect data and location information whenever a target of interest uses Google Maps. Data can be skimmed from address books, buddy lists, phone logs and the geographical data logged in photos taken from smartphones or digital cameras, whenever a target sends information to social media websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Flickr.
The documents don't disclose how often the NSA collects data from apps, nor the amount of users that have been affected during these operations. The numbers could be staggering since Angry Birds has been downloaded around 2 billion times worldwide.
Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, said in a statement that it had no idea the NSA was collecting data from its users.
"Rovio doesn't have any previous knowledge of this matter, and have not been aware of such activity in 3rd party advertising networks," said Saara Bergström, Rovio's VP of marketing and communications. "Nor do we have any involvement with the organizations you mentioned [NSA and GCHQ]."
The maker of the app, which has been downloaded around 2 billion times to date since its launch in 2009, said it may be possible that the spy agencies are using third party advertising networks to conduct their surveillance programs and if that's true, "it would appear that no internet-enabled device that visits ad-enabled websites or uses ad-enabled applications is immune to such surveillance."
Rovio also said that it will investigate the matter and if it finds that some third party advertising networks are indeed working with the spy agencies, it would have to "re-evaluate working with these networks."
The NSA told The Times that it does not profile "everyday Americans" during a foreign intelligence mission.
White House press Secretary John Carney reiterated that message during a Monday press conference.
"As the president said in his Jan. 17 speech, to the extent data is collected by the NSA, through whatever means, we are not interested in the communications of people who are not valid foreign intelligence targets and we are not after the information of ordinary Americans," Carney said.
