The Guardian confirms what we have known (but happily ignored) all the way: If you have a commercial app, it will be under surbeillance, except if their creators have made sure they do not have the technical ability (and then, well, it’s up to Apple, Google or whoever else to grant the agents access):

“…After reviewing Whisper’s back-end tools and speaking extensively with the company’s executives, the Guardian has also established that:

User data, including Whisper postings that users believe they have deleted, is collated in a searchable database. The company has no access to users’ names or phone numbers, but is storing information about the precise time and approximate location of all previous messages posted through the app. The data, which stretches back to the app’s launch in 2012, is being stored indefinitely, a practice seemingly at odds with Whisper’s stated policy of holding the data only for “a brief period of time”.

A team headed by Whisper’s editor-in-chief, Neetzan Zimmerman, is closely monitoring users it believes are potentially newsworthy, delving into the history of their activity on the app and tracking their movements through the mapping tool. Among the many users currently being targeted are military personnel and individuals claiming to work at Yahoo, Disney and on Capitol Hill.”

read on: Revealed: how Whisper app tracks ‘anonymous’ users | Technology | The Guardian.