GFI Software this week that described how apps created by the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns as outreach to potential voters are designed to be able to capture GPS information related to the user's device, among other personal information.

These Google Android and Apple iOS apps -- one is called "Mitt's VP" and the other "Obama for America" -- are both available through the official Apple and Android app stores and are intended to give the presidential campaigns a closer connection to potential voters. But according to Dodi Glenn, GFI's product manager for the VIPRE anti-malware consumer product line, both the Obama and Romney apps extend the ability to monitor and control the user's tablet or smartphone a little too far.

The Romney app is designed to give that campaign the ability to activate the device camera and turn on the audio like an open mike, Glenn points out. Both the Romney and Obama apps can read the user's contacts and upload them. And both can exploit GPS functions in devices with GPS chips. "Both have the ability to capture GPS data," he says.

The "Obama for America" app takes geolocation data to the greater extreme, he points out. The Obama app allows for the presentation of a U.S. map where Democrat-registered voters are displayed as blue flags in the neighborhood where they live. The Obama app encourages supporters to canvas neighbors to get them to vote, says Glenn. He says he finds it all a "little creepy."

"They want you to go to the neighbors, it's how to volunteer for the campaign," Glenn surmises. The nation's political-party voter registration information is readily available to political campaigns and his long been widely used for targeted political advertising via telephone calls and regular mail asking for donations, for example. But even though personal names aren't being displayed on the Obama for America app map, Glenn says he finds it disconcerting to see GPS data used in a modern political campaign in this way on user smartphones and tablets.