It would appear that hackers seem to believe that the religious are must more naïve and less likely to be tech-savvy, or maybe they are more likely to forgive them.

The Threat Insight team from Proofpoint looked at thousands of iOS and Android apps, and found that a disturbing percentage of religious apps included secret tracking components, as well as data-stealing elements and the ability to make unauthorised calls and not to Jesus.

More than 3.7 percent of 'Bible apps' featured malicious code which transmitted personal users data to hundreds of servers in dozens of countries.

Kevin Epstein, VP of Threat Operations said that nothing was sacred to hackers:

“The surprising prevalence of riskware in religious texts' apps provides further evidence that mobile users -- and their employers -- need to be far more security-conscious. The findings are also a valuable reminder of the importance of a mobile app security strategy for organizations. To protect employees and users from unscrupulous scammers and cybercriminals -- and against riskware and malicious apps in general -- organisations should define policies and deploy solutions that enable them to identify and control these apps before they can impact the organization's security posture.”