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White House App Found Tracking Users' Exact Location Every 4.5 Minutes via Third-Party Server (www.ibtimes.co.uk)
submitted 4 weeks ago by spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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.

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[-] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 2 points 4 weeks ago

What you wrote reminded me of a minor idea that's been floating in my head: I kind of wish that more governments did something like requiring adding your business to OpenStreetMaps as part of registering the business with the government, or even just publishing the basic data (location, opening hours, ...) somewhere that all the maps apps sync with

[-] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 weeks ago

That would be cool, but isn't OSM the one with the wonky governance issues? A bunch of devs split from them and forked the source code, which they now develop as CoMaps. It's a much more solid option for that reason

[-] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 1 points 4 weeks ago

From Wikipedia, not quite but I learnt so something, so thanks:

CoMaps is a community-driven, free and open-source, offline navigation app that uses map data from OpenStreetMap (OSM)

The CoMaps project was initiated in response to growing concerns and dissatisfaction within the Organic Maps community. The original Organic Maps project, while initially promoted as an open community effort, faced significant issues related to governance, transparency, and the potential for shareholder profit at the expense of the community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoMaps

[-] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 weeks ago

Ah, I see. I had it confused for Organic Maps. Thanks for clarifying

this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
1066 points (100.0% liked)

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