00:00The White House's new app might be tracking you.
00:03Or at least that's what a few tech investigators are saying.
00:05Here's what's happening.
00:06The Trump administration launched its official White House app on March 27th,
00:10promising unfiltered access straight from the source.
00:13And within 24 hours, two independent researchers published what they found
00:17when they cracked open the code.
00:19Now, stay with me here.
00:20The app's privacy label, or the thing that tells you what data an app collects,
00:24says it collects nothing on the App Store.
00:26But the researchers say the code disagrees.
00:29They found GPS tracking, behavioral data, and user information being sent to seven outside companies.
00:36One of those companies loads live code from a service originally founded in Russia.
00:41The app was also quietly hiding cookie consent pop-ups on websites you visited through it,
00:46basically making privacy decisions for you without asking.
00:49Now, this matters because government apps are held to a higher standard
00:53because the people downloading them are more than likely citizens, not just customers.
00:57And when a government app potentially misrepresents what it collects, that's not just a tech problem.
01:02If citizens can't trust what their own government software says it's doing,
01:06what else is getting waved through without a second look?
01:08Supporters say this is just what modern communication looks like.
01:11Every major institution has an app,
01:13and singling out this one while TikTok spent years doing far worse to your phone is a political move.
01:18But the researchers who dug into the code themselves wrote,
01:21We've audited apps for startups with three employees that had better security than this.
01:26So here's the big question.
01:27Should government apps be held to a higher privacy standard than startups,
01:31or do you think these reports are false?
01:33Let us know in the comments, follow us here for more,
01:35and check out our website for more privacy stories just like this.
01:37Please!
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