Spain’s Liga de Fútbol Profesional is reportedly using its La Liga app to track down illegal broadcasts of matches.
According to Spanish newspaper El Dario, the app asks to access the microphone on a user’s smartphone.
The microphone then uses the mic to “detect if what it sounds like is a bar or public establishment where a football match is being projected without paying the fee established by the chains that own the broadcasting rights.”
The app gets round any legal issues by including details within its terms and conditions which gives La Liga permission to turn on the phone’s microphone and even its GPS in order to reveal the location.
El Dario says La Liga has defended the app, saying that pirated broadcasts of its football games cost the company “losses of more than €150 million,” and that La Liga activates devices’ microphones “to develop statistical patterns on soccer consumption and to detect fraudulent operations of the retransmissions of La Liga football matches.”
It claims user privacy is not at risk because the app turns audio recordings into code and doesn’t record or save any data locally.
