Warriors smartphone app secretly recorded users’ private conversations, lawsuit alleges

The Golden State Warriors are being sued in a U.S. district court over the team’s official smartphone app, which allegedly recorded private conversations from fans’ phones, according to The Daily Beast.

Warriors fan LaTisha Satchell’s lawsuit is alleging that the app turned on the phone microphone and kept it on, gathering audio recordings that were sent back to the Warriors and another tech company. This may be a violation of wiretap laws, the U.S. district judge said.

The app asked for permission from users to use the microphone, and there is a tangible reason for that. It used audio “beacons” — unique sounds played at Oracle Arena and fan stores — to recognize where users were, allowing the app to send advertisements and notifications to the user. However, the app also kept recording even when users weren’t in public spaces, according to the complaint.

“[The Warriors] gained access to tens of thousands of microphones belonging to consumers who downloaded the Warriors App and turned their mobile devices into bugged listening devices,” the suit alleges, according to The Daily Beast.

The Warriors deny these allegations.

“While we normally do not comment on pending litigation, the allegations in this lawsuit are purely fanciful and wholly without merit,” the Warriors said in a statement provided to SB Nation. “Our app has never been used to listen to any conversations. Period.”

Satchell previously filed a suit that was thrown out due to a lack of evidence. This time around, she has screenshots of the data-tracking program that the Warriors use for the app. Even though users had to grant permission for the application to access the microphone, they likely had no clue the extent of the privacy invasion that they were accepting.

The Warriors app in question has more than 500,000 downloads.

The story was originally published on Nov. 27, 2017. It has been updated with a statement from the Warriors.