President Donald Trump’s new White House app is a privacy nightmare for some users.
On Friday, the Trump administration released a new White House mobile app for iOS and Android devices. The official White House account on X shared links to the apps and said that the app would live-stream and provide real-time updates “straight from the source.”
One thing they didn’t share, however, is that when downloading the app, users are handing over quite a bit of information to the Trump administration.
The White House app requests user permission to access precise locations, network connections, fingerprint and biometric data, the ability to prevent the device from sleeping, and even modify or delete contents of shared storage.
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X user @Thereallo1026 went so far as decompiling the White House app and found that it’s sharing the exact location data of its users every 4.5 minutes and sending that information to a third-party server.
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The third-party, OneSignal, is a company that provides push notification services. Location data is typically used by OneSignal to push notifications to users for location-based campaigns. While many companies use OneSignal’s services, it is particularly concerning for the U.S. government to collect this data through an app that encourages users to report people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
However, the most concerning part of @Thereallo1026’s findings is that the White House app is apparently loading YouTube video embeds via a random GitHub user’s personal page. According to the report, if this GitHub user’s account is ever compromised, an attacker could “serve arbitrary HTML and JavaScript to every user of this app.”
In addition to this major security issue, the in-app web browser on the White House app injects CSS and JavaScript that removes cookie consent prompts, GDPR banners, logins, and paywalls from third-party websites.
So, if for some reason you were compelled to download the new official White House app, be aware of these security and privacy issues.
