- ITV Report
Isis official app available to download on Google Play
An app for extremist group Isis is available to download on Google Play as part of the Sunni militants' drive to increase their profile by using social media sites.
Thousands of users have signed up for the group's official app, which has been active since April this year, through the Google Play store.
It is described as the "app that gives you news from Syria, Iraq and the Islamic world".
To download the app, which is called 'The Dawn of Glad Tidings', users are asked for a lot of personal data including access to modifying or deleting "the contents of your USB storage" and to "view Wi-Fi connections."
The Dawn - which the app is also known as - then automatically posts tweets to the user's personal Twitter account.
There were almost 40,000 tweets from the app on the day Isis captured Iraq's second city Mosul, according to The Atlantic.
One user of the app wrote on Google Play: "The Islamic State of Syria and Iraq forever. It is the hope of the Muslim community and it is the path to dignity and establishment of the caliphate.”
ITV News has contacted Google for a statement but the company has not yet responded.
Joseph Carter, research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, told ITV News Isis has been both "influential and effective" in getting their message out on social media sites.
Isis are "doing a lot of work on branding to make them look like an effective and desirable fighting force to join," he added.
When asked what the implications of Isis's social media strategy are on the UK, Mr Carter said: "The effect on the UK is that it means they will be more effective in recruiting foreign fighters.
"Westerners are now mainly going to Isis instead of other groups - part of that might be down to the group's more lax standards on who they accept but also a product of them being so prolific on social media."
He added that British fighters joining Isis could pose a threat to the UK in the future.
In a bid to combat Isis's social media campaign, the Iraqi government reportedly blocked sites including Facebook and Twitter.
Users in the country trying to access social media were reportedly sent to a Ministry of Communications webpage which said they were could not view the sites.
The militant Sunni group also used Twitter to post graphic pictures of, what it claims, is a massacre of Iraqi government soldiers.
A picture of an armed fighter looking at the Isis flag flying over Iraq's capital with the caption, "We are coming, Baghdad" has also been tweeted from their account.
The group have today attacked a town only 40 miles away from Baghdad and released all of its prisoners, as people in the capital prepared for an attack from the group.
Iraqi men have been buying military uniforms from shops to prepare for the worst and an Iranian general has arrived in the city to co-ordinate its defence, according to The Guardian.
In Mosul - the city Isis took over last week - fundamentalist rule has been imposed by the group.
Additional reporting by Tam Hussein
