La Liga app spied on users through their phone microphones to fight illegal football broadcasts

Lionel Messi
Spain's top football league La Liga has admitted to making recordings of people who had downloaded its official app. Credit: Reuters

The Spanish football league La Liga has admitted that its official smartphone app has been making audio recordings in order to identify pirate broadcasts of football games.

The league said its app detected the location of users, and if they were found to be in a bar, it then recorded audio clips using phone microphones.

The app used an algorithm to identify whether the person was watching a football game from the recording and compared that with their location to see if it the bar owner had paid for a licence to show the game or not.

La Liga has denied any wrongdoing and said that users allowed the app to access their location and microphone in an optional clause when they sign up to the app....

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