San Francisco: A push notification on the popular crime reporting app called Citizen disclosed the exact location of an alleged break-in at singer-songwriter Billie Eilish’s family home to at least 178,000 people on the platform.
According to a report in Vice, the push notification informed thousands of users that police were responding to a 911 call in Los Angeles, an attempted burglary at a specific home in the city’s Highland Park neighbourhood.
Later, the notification was updated to disclose that, according to police, the home belonged to pop star Eilish.
The notification, which included the home’s exact address, was sent to 178,000 people and viewed by about 78,000 people, the report said late on Friday.
Eilish grew up in Highland Park but the home is blurred on Google Maps for privacy.
The app later changed the address of the reported incident, naming a cross-street, not an exact address.
The Citizen app was originally called Vigilante. The aim of the app is to encourage users to upload videos and photos of alleged crimes and police activity happening around them.
In December last year, Twitter CEO Elon Musk suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists on the micro-blogging platform as they covered his “exact real-time location”, called “Doxxing”.
Doxxing (also spelled doxing) is the act of revealing someone’s personal information online. It is a form of online harassment that means publicly exposing someone’s real name, address, job or other identifying data.
Musk had also suspended the Twitter account that was tracking the movements of his private plane.
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