The White House mobile app has been available for both Android and iOS users for over a week now, and the Trump administration is proudly touting that the app has received 2 million downloads on the White House Instagram page. However, the app's threats to your personal data, online security and privacy concerns make it something you should think twice about downloading.
The White House announcement says the app's goal is to deliver "unparalleled access to the Trump administration." However, there are many security concerns, including location tracking and sketchy features. The White House has not responded to a request for comment.
The big question is, should you download it? I don't recommend it. Here's why.Â
What's in The White House App?
When I downloaded it soon after its release, the app opened with music and a brief collage video of President Donald Trump. It has pages on affordability, including the prices of things like eggs and milk (but not gas). There's an overtime calculator. And there are links to articles from Trump's favored news outlets, like Fox News and Newsmax, along with White House press releases.
The app also features livestreams and videos of press briefings, links to the White House's social feeds and photos of the president.
Why I deleted The White House app so fastÂ
Behind all those tabs are hair-raising privacy and security issues that have the internet and experts alarmed.Â
One X user, @Thereallo1026, decompiled the White House app and blogged about it, reporting that the Android app tracks your location as often as every 4.5 minutes and shares a lot of other information, like your notifications and perhaps even your phone number, with a third-party server.Â
Another red flag is that the code for YouTube embeds comes from a personal GitHub account. Thereallo said that if that GitHub account gets compromised, it can affect every user of the White House's app.Â
Another cybersecurity researcher, Atomic Computer Services, posted similar concerns about the iOS app. The researchers found that the app reported to the App Store that it did not collect location data, when in fact it included the capability to do GPS tracking. It's unclear whether that tracking actually happens, but the code is there, Atomic Computer said.
Other concerns identified by Atomic Computer included the removal of privacy consent banners from third-party content viewed in the app and minimal security protections. "We've audited apps for startups with three employees that had better security than this," Atomic Computer wrote.
Pieter Arntz, a researcher at the cybersecurity software provider Malwarebytes, said in an email to CNET that the White House app relies heavily on third-party sources for things like notifications and widgets.Â
"In practical terms, that means external providers can influence what data is collected and when features like location‑based messaging are enabled, because much of that logic is configured on their servers rather than baked into the app code itself," Arntz said. "For a high‑profile government app, the more these decisions sit with outside companies, the harder it is to guarantee strict data‑minimization and full transparency to users about how their information is handled."
Government-sponsored apps to inform people are commonplace, but this one poses significant risks, experts said. A spokesperson for the Center for Democracy and Technology, which advocates for transparency and privacy in government technology, told CNET that "mobile apps can be a helpful tool for making government more accessible. But this administration has given people a lot of reasons to worry about their privacy, and this app only raises more questions about what the federal government is doing with our personal data."
For me, this app is a hard pass. I deleted it 10 minutes after downloading it.Â