Sneaky apps.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: NSA in your pocket - Intelligence gathering through mobile applications - Brief article

THANKS to so-called "leaky apps," the National Security Agency may be plucking information about your gaming habits, browsing history, social networking, and even sexual orientation from the nation's cellphone networks, along with specific location data.

Newly released documents from as far back as 2010 show that many apps, including Google Maps, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, and Angry Birds, bleed information about their users by design, in order to enable targeted ads. Government snoops are taking advantage of this fact in the U.S. and U.K. to gather intelligence, along with the...