By: Johana Bhuiyan
NEW YORK—Five times a day, tens of millions of phones buzz with notifications from an app called Muslim Pro, reminding users it’s time to pray. While Muslims in Los Angeles woke Thursday to a dawn notification that read, “Fajr at 5:17 AM,” users in Sri Lanka were minutes away from getting a ping telling them it was time for Isha, or the night prayer.
The app’s Qibla compass quickly orients devices toward the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia — which Muslims face when praying. When prayers are done, the in-app Quran lets users pick up reading exactly where they left off. A counter tallies the days of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. Listings guide users to halal food in their area.
These features make it easier to practice the many daily rituals prescribed in Islam, turning Muslim Pro into the most popular Muslim app in the world, according to the app’s maker, Singapore-based BitsMedia. But revelations about the app’s data col- lection and sales practices have left some users wondering if the convenience is worth the risk.
BitsMedia sells user location data to a
broker called X Mode, which in turn sells that information to contractors. X Mode’s client list has included U.S. military contractors, the tech publication Motherboard first reported last week.
Mass calls to delete Muslim Pro and a separate Muslim matrimony app called Muslim Mingle have since echoed across social media, resonating among communities that have long been the target of government surveillance.
Majlis Ash-Shura, a leadership council that represents 90 New York state mosques, sent a notification urging people to delete Muslim Pro, citing “safety and data privacy.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group, sent letters to three U.S. House committee chairs asking them to investigate the U.S. military’s purchase of location and movement data of users of Muslim-oriented apps.
CAIR called for legislation prohibiting government agencies from purchasing user data that would otherwise require a warrant.
In a statement, Muslim Pro denied that sold user data directly to the U.S. military but confirmed that it had worked with X Mode.
Muslim Pro said it always anonymized the user data it sold, and said that the company planned to terminate its relationship with X Mode and all other data brokers.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said an investigation into the data broker industry showed that as of September, X Mode was “selling data collected from phones in the United States to U.S. military customers, via defense contractors.”
“Every single American has the right to practice their religion without being spied on,” Wyden tweeted. “I will continue to watchdog this announcement and ensure Americans’ constitutional rights are protected.”
X Mode did not respond to requests for comment, but reportedly ceased working with two specific defense contractors named in the Motherboard report. Muslim Pro did not respond to questions about whether executives were aware of what X Mode did with user information after its purchase.
Muslim Pro is trying to win back users worried about their privacy. Upon downloading the app, users now see a pop-up that says, “media reports are circulating that Muslim Pro has been selling personal data of its users to the US Military. This is INCORRECT and UNTRUE. Muslim Pro is committed to protecting and securing our users’ privacy. This is a matter we take very seriously.”
Imam Omar Suleiman, a prominent Muslim scholar and the founder of Yaqeen In- stitute for Islamic Research, felt the com- pany’s statement was a deflection.
“There has to be some humility to accept their responsibility,” said Suleiman. “They should have said, ‘Look, we totally messed up. We should not have done that. We need to be more careful. And these are the steps that we’re going to take to remedy the situation.’ Instead, it seems like the response was just very defensive.”
BitsMedia was founded in 2009 by Erwan Mace — a Singapore-based iOS developer whose LinkedIn profile shows previous stints at major tech companies like Google, Akamai and Nokia-owned Alcatel. Bits- Media built and developed apps for corporate clients and an app-discovery service called Frenzapp, but Muslim Pro is far and away the company’s biggest success.
Mace told the site TechinAsia that he launched Muslim Pro in 2010 after noticing how his Muslim friends had to turn to the radio, the local mosque or the newspaper to find out what time to break their fast during Ramadan. By 2017, Muslim Pro had been downloaded 45 million times, piquing the interest of private equity firms Bintang Capital and CMIA Capital Partners.
The firms acquired BitsMedia for an undisclosed amount and Mace left the company two years later. Muslim Pro offers two versions of its product: a free app that is supported by advertisements and a paid subscription service for those who prefer to avoid seeing pop-ups for businesses such as Doordash and Western Union under verses for the Quran.
The company says the app has been downloaded more than 90 million times on iOS devices, and it has tallied more than 50 million downloads on Android devices, according to the Google Play store.
In the world of free apps and internet services, the sale and exchange of personal information are not unusual. In fact, in most cases it’s what keeps free apps free. Facebook, Google, Twitter and practically every other company sell ads against
