The White House app that surged in popularity alongside the launch of Trump TV comes with security flaws that insiders say most users didn’t bargain for.
The app “shot to the top” of Apple’s App Store news category last week after the White House’s new 24/7 broadcast channel was pitched as a legitimate news source while major networks paused pool coverage, according to The Washington Sun.
But accessing that programming means trading away “a trove of personal data” — and no one outside the administration can say for certain where it ends up.
“The people who do want to hear that message are going to the White House for it, and in doing so, they’re giving up a lot of information about themselves, and that provides the White House with an advantage going into the midterms,” Philip Fields, a cybersecurity researcher and former FBI intelligence analyst who has studied the app told The Sun.
Experts have floated theories ranging from targeted campaign messaging’ to flagging users for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Secret Service, though the Sun’s independent risk assessment couldn’t pin down a definitive answer.
“The bottom line is this app is just not very stable or secure,” Joseph Gera, a former Apple App Store developer and senior platform engineer, explained to The Sun. “It’s asking for your location data in real time. It also asks for personal information, to access your financial data, to access your messages, to access all kinds of information.”
Federal apps are legally required to meet NIST-designed security standards, but the app has drawn scrutiny before for sharing IP addresses and other data with third-party services, including a Russian widget provider. It remains “force-installed on government devices” across the executive branch, with no public security authorization or privacy assessment ever completed.
Pressure pushed developers to swap in commercial trackers instead — but Fields says that’s only made the surveillance harder to spot. “The way that they’re doing their collection now is harder to discern, because they’ve just used commercial trackers instead,” he said.
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