Canvassing apps used by UK political parties riddled with privacy, security issues

The Open Rights Group (ORG) has raised concerns about a number of security issues it found in all three of the canvassing apps developed on behalf of the UK's three major political parties. Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats all offer different digital tools that aim to ease the burden of data entry for door-knocking campaigners looking to register voters' support. All data was gathered during the run-up to last year's general election and the ORG claimed all three parties' apps had different types of issues affecting them. The incumbent Labour government's three web-based activist tools – Reach, Doorstep, and Contact Creator – were investigated. All three are used interchangeably to build a database of voters, complete with specific information about them to aid voter profiling, the ORG said. The main issue raised by the privacy campaigners here was that various URLs tied to the apps were associated with infrastructure operated by credit reference agency Experian. The ORG said Labour's privacy policy doesn't explain the relationship between the data collected in the apps and the degree to which it is shared with Experian. Its findings were based on limited, static technical analysis. It didn't acquire login credentials for any of the apps, which ruled out more thorough testing, but nevertheless called on Labour to be more transparent about its relationship with Experian. Two mobile apps used by Tory campaigners were also analyzed. VoteSource is a data entry...