Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 17 submissions in the queue.
posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-not-what-I-did dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They're Not Keeping It Secret

At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. Several of those businesses claim to track up to 200 million mobile devices in the United States — about half those in use last year. The database reviewed by The Times — a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company — reveals people’s travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day.

These companies sell, use or analyze the data to cater to advertisers, retail outlets and even hedge funds seeking insights into consumer behavior. It’s a hot market, with sales of location-targeted advertising reaching an estimated $21 billion this year. IBM has gotten into the industry, with its purchase of the Weather Channel’s apps. The social network Foursquare remade itself as a location marketing company. Prominent investors in location start-ups include Goldman Sachs and Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder.

Businesses say their interest is in the patterns, not the identities, that the data reveals about consumers. They note that the information apps collect is tied not to someone’s name or phone number but to a unique ID. But those with access to the raw data — including employees or clients — could still identify a person without consent. They could follow someone they knew, by pinpointing a phone that regularly spent time at that person’s home address. Or, working in reverse, they could attach a name to an anonymous dot, by seeing where the device spent nights and using public records to figure out who lived there.

Many location companies say that when phone users enable location services, their data is fair game. But, The Times found, the explanations people see when prompted to give permission are often incomplete or misleading. An app may tell users that granting access to their location will help them get traffic information, but not mention that the data will be shared and sold. That disclosure is often buried in a vague privacy policy.

“Location information can reveal some of the most intimate details of a person’s life — whether you’ve visited a psychiatrist, whether you went to an A.A. meeting, who you might date,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who has proposed bills to limit the collection and sale of such data, which are largely unregulated in the United States.

“It’s not right to have consumers kept in the dark about how their data is sold and shared and then leave them unable to do anything about it,” he added.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday December 11 2018, @04:41PM (1 child)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 11 2018, @04:41PM (#772929) Journal

    My favorites are the ones who think app permissions are the only gateway to being tracked. And not shit like "free wifi", the cell phone network itself, built in apps that you never use(yeah the facebook app you never signed into that your provider stuck on your phone for convenience still tracks you), digital assistants, and more.

    And even if you nail all that down, you're still basically just trusting apple or google to not lie about what your base tracking settings mean.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:36PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:36PM (#772982) Homepage Journal

    No, the only thing I'm trusting is that my cell provider isn't putting my triangulated location data up on a public page. There's fuck all you can do about your provider but the rest you can entirely control when you've got an opensource OS on your phone and compile yourself instead of trusting someone else's binaries.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.