The LaLiga mobile application of the football organization spyed through the microphone to detect pirate transmissions of matches.

The Spanish La Liga has spyed on the users of its application to detect whether they are taking part in a screening of a pirate match. I don't think everyone was aware of that, but of course you had to agree to use the microphone in order for the application to work.

Report on pirate matches
La League, as we know, is a leading Spanish football association. As part of its activities, it provides a mobile application, which should be used to inform about what is happening in the world of football. Unfortunately, it came to light that after one of the updates, the application can also activate the microphone and determine the location of the user. All this in order to determine whether there is a public broadcast of a match around the fan.

Users had to agree to use the microphone when installing the application, but it can be inferred from the articles in the press that many people had no idea about the spying nature of the application. The Spanish data protection authority has already announced the launch of proceedings in this case on Twitter:

You do not need to know Spanish very well to understand what 'investigación de oficio' means

La League itself has also published its statement. It states that only if you agree to the use of a microphone can a 'binary code' be intercepted for the sole purpose of determining whether someone is currently watching the match.

La League does not receive any fragments of the recordings, and the mentioned "binary code" does not allow to play back the audio recording (it is only compared with the "control code"). Importantly, however, this "binary code" contains your IP address and unique application ID.

Of course, you can revoke your consent to the use of the microphone at any time. La League promises to regularly remind users about the "anti-piracy" function of the application. We guess that the data from the La League application is unlikely to be a proof in court. However, it could result in sending a proxy or an employee of the association to some venue, which has been indicated by many supporter devices as a place of illegal match playing.