this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
1071 points (99.1% liked)

Technology

83225 readers
3668 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
1071
White House App Found Tracking Users' Exact Location Every 4.5 Minutes via Third-Party Server (www.ibtimes.co.uk)
submitted 2 days ago by spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
146 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The Trump administration's newly launched White House App is under scrutiny after a software developer claimed to have found embedded code that tracks users' precise GPS coordinates every 4.5 minutes and automatically syncs them to a third-party server. The claim, posted on 28 March 2026 by the X account @Thereallo1026, has drawn nearly 260,000 views and prompted questions about data collection practices in government-operated applications.

The post included what appeared to be decompiled source code from the app, revealing what the user described as OneSignal's 'full GPS pipeline compiled in.' According to the post, the code showed the app 'polling your location every 4.5 minutes, syncing your exact coordinates to a third-party server.' The White House has not publicly responded to the specific technical claims.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

that would still require the OS or user to spoof a location to actually prevent tracking. I hope they'd do that, but I wouldn't expect them to.

[–] Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Which? Leaving it in a desk prevents tracking because the desk isn't following you. Putting it on an account that is fully logged out by default means it only gets your location when you switch to that account (which you can control).

I have a separate user in GrapheneOS for service accounts like Amazon or my Philips Hue lights, and that account is fully blocked for running in the background. Once a month or so when I need one of those apps I'm sure they all phone home, but their data is heavily limited.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I thought it was a given that, if it's a phone app, you're likely to want to carry it with you, not leave it on a desk with your computer.