• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia
TechDonald Trump

With Trump’s Campaign App, There’s No Wall Protecting Your Contact Data

By
David Z. Morris
David Z. Morris
Down Arrow Button Icon
August 28, 2016, 10:41 AM ET
trump campaign app
trump campaign appuCampaign

Donald Trump’s new campaign app, dubbed America First, asks to collect troubling amounts of data from users, including their address books, according to experts speaking to ABC News.

The app is, appropriately, a kind of competitive social game, with users earning “action points” for things like checking in at rallies, donating to the campaign, and posting messages of support on social media. Users are then ranked on local and national leaderboards.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

But according to the app’s privacy policy, the app “may access, collect, and store personal information about other people that is available to us through your contact list and/or address book.” Though it’s not clear how this data would be used by the app or campaign, it could be added to campaign databases for fundraising or get out the vote efforts, exposing users’ networks to unwanted communications. That would also expose users’ contact data to any breach of the Trump campaigns’ systems, which were recently compromised.

It’s common for both political campaigns and mobile apps in general to aggressively collect user information, but an analyst with the ACLU told ABC that Trump’s app collects “significantly more data” about users than Hillary Clinton’s campaign app. Marc Rotenburg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said the level of access requested by the Trump app is “egregious.”

Denying the Trump app access to contacts on initial installation doesn’t seem to prevent use of America First, though, so Trump supporters concerned about privacy do have an option.

For more on Trump and tech, watch our video.

The low privacy protections of Trump’s app are, in fact, in line with his broader anti-privacy stances. He has criticized Apple for its resistance to providing security backdoors to the government, and has suggested he supported executing Edward Snowden for exposing the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs.

The application was developed by uCampaign, which has also developed voter engagement apps for the pro-Brexit campaign and former presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

About the Author
By David Z. Morris
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • Future 50
  • World’s Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
Sections
  • Finance
  • Leadership
  • Success
  • Tech
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Environment
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Health
  • Retail
  • Lifestyle
  • Politics
  • Newsletters
  • Magazine
  • Features
  • Commentary
  • Mpw
  • CEO Initiative
  • Conferences
  • Personal Finance
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
About Us
  • About Us
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Diversity And Inclusion
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map

© 2025 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.


Most Popular

placeholder alt text
Success
Meetings are not work, says Southwest Airlines CEO—and he’s taking action, by blocking his calendar every afternoon from Wednesday to Friday 
By Preston ForeDecember 15, 2025
2 days ago
placeholder alt text
Success
'I had to take 60 meetings': Jeff Bezos says 'the hardest thing I've ever done' was raising the first million dollars of seed capital for Amazon
By Dave SmithDecember 15, 2025
1 day ago
placeholder alt text
Economy
America's $38 trillion national debt 'exacerbates generational imbalances' with Gen Z and millennials paying the price, warns think tank
By Eleanor PringleDecember 16, 2025
17 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Future of Work
The job market is so bad, people in their 40s are resorting to going back to school instead of looking for work
By Sydney LakeDecember 16, 2025
20 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Innovation
An MIT roboticist who cofounded bankrupt Roomba maker iRobot says Elon Musk's vision of humanoid robot assistants is 'pure fantasy thinking'
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezDecember 16, 2025
14 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Success
Bad luck, six-figure earners: Elon Musk warns that money will 'disappear' in the future as AI makes work (and salaries) irrelevant
By Orianna Rosa RoyleDecember 15, 2025
2 days ago

Latest in Tech

A group of three robots waiving hello to the audience from a stage.
AIEye on AI
Google researchers unlock some truths about getting AI agents to actually work
By Jeremy KahnDecember 16, 2025
7 hours ago
AIthe future of work
IBM, AWS veteran says 90% of your employees are stuck in first gear with AI, just asking it to ‘write their mean email in a slightly more polite way’
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezDecember 16, 2025
7 hours ago
Photo of Elon Musk
Startups & VentureSpaceX
A SpaceX IPO could be the largest public offering of all time—and Elon Musk’s biggest headache
By Jessica MathewsDecember 16, 2025
9 hours ago
AIOpenAI
OpenAI releases new image model as it races to outpace Google’s Nano Banana amid company code red
By Sharon GoldmanDecember 16, 2025
10 hours ago
Arnab
AIBrainstorm AI
Accenture exec gets real on transformation: ‘the data and AI strategy is not a separate strategy, it is the business strategy’
By Nick LichtenbergDecember 16, 2025
10 hours ago
Matt Garman speaks on stage in front of a screen showing colorful concentric circles on a black background.
Future of WorkAmazon
AWS CEO says replacing young employees with AI is ‘one of the dumbest ideas’—and bad for business: ‘At some point the whole thing explodes on itself’
By Sasha RogelbergDecember 16, 2025
11 hours ago