Anonymous messaging app 'Whisper' reportedly shares users' location with US agencies

Whisper, the discreet social media app that lets users post messages anonymously, may have been tracking its users' locations, and sharing it with US government agencies like Pentagon.

That information has occasionally been shared with the US government, including agencies such as the Pentagon, using a lower legal standard than is commonly used by other tech companies, according to an in-depth report by The Guardian.

What they discovered over the course of three days showed that Whisper not only kept tabs on accounts it deemed interesting - military personnel, a sex-obsessed lobbyist, and political staffers, to name a few - but that it retained that information for far longer than its Web site suggested.

According to The Guardian, Whisper occasionally uses user IP addresses but does not store usernames, phone numbers or personally identifiable information.

However, Whisper spokeswoman Tracy Akselrud said that the company is not sharing specific user data with any organization but was working with the Defense Department on a study about post-traumatic stress disorder.

Meanwhile, when a user opted out of the geolocation tracking feature, which allows users to see Whisper posts that are nearby, Whisper was still able to collect rough location data on a case-by-case basis from certain users' phones.

Via : ANI