The Trump administration's White House App is under scrutiny after claims of embedded code tracking users' GPS coordinates every 4.5 minutes.

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.

  • morriscox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    2 days ago

    A previous version of this article stated that the White House app was actively tracking users’ GPS coordinates every 4.5 minutes via OneSignal’s SDK. This characterisation, which circulated widely on X, including in posts that accumulated hundreds of thousands of views, has since been contested by independent technical analysis. Multiple developers who reviewed the decompiled code confirmed that while the GPS tracking constants exist within OneSignal’s bundled SDK, the app does not call that capability. No location permission prompt is issued to users upon installation, and OneSignal’s documentation states that location data is not collected unless a developer explicitly enables the feature. The GPS code is most likely residual from the SDK template rather than a deliberate implementation. This article has been updated to reflect that distinction.

    This is at the bottom of the article.

    • Paragone@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      Anybody, anybody at all, who believes that they aren’t going to be doing something really machiavellian, after operating on a “million deportations per year” paradigm, needs their head examined.

      After dictatorship is activated, it’ll be required for citizens.

      Wait & see…

      ( & if they forgot to put spyware into their app this time, that doesn’t mean it won’t come in in an update. )

      Get cynical: evidence warrants it, nowadays…

      _ /\ _

      PS: I have NO idea why a partial-version of this comment got multi-posted, while I was still writing it.

      Sorry.

      • the_crotch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        15 hours ago

        ( & if they forgot to put spyware into their app this time, that doesn’t mean it won’t come in in an update. )

        Do you honestly believe the federal government needs people to install the official Whitehouse app in order to track their location?

        If so, lol.