Spy agencies use game to harvest personal data

GCHQ, the government’s listening post, and the US National Security Agency (NSA) are using smartphone applications to gather private details such as age, gender and location, as well as contacts and websites visited.

Some applications can even share sensitive information, such as sexual orientation, marital status and income, it was claimed.

The disclosure comes in the latest round of classified documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, published in the Guardian, the New York Times and ProPublica.

The reports suggest data is gleaned through mapping, gaming and social networking applications, using techniques similar to those used to intercept text message data and mobile internet traffic.

Most major social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, remove metadata that can give away information about location from photographs before they are published, the Guardian said.

But during the uploading process data can, briefly, be available for collection by spying agencies.

Depending on a user’s profile information, the documents suggested, agencies could then collect almost every useful detail about a person, including home country, current location, age, gender, postcode, marital status, income, ethnicity, education, sexual orientation and number of children.