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Sixty-seven percent of smartphone users rely on Google Maps to help them get to where they are going quickly and efficiently.
A major of[sic] feature of Google Maps is its ability to predict how long different navigation routes will take. That's possible because the mobile phone of each person using Google Maps sends data about its location and speed back to Google's servers, where it is analyzed to generate new data about traffic conditions.Information like this is useful for navigation. But the exact same data that is used to predict traffic patterns can also be used to predict other kinds of information – information people might not be comfortable with revealing.
For example, data about a mobile phone's past location and movement patterns can be used to predict where a person lives, who their employer is, where they attend religious services and the age range of their children based on where they drop them off for school.
Perhaps we can carefully craft our data patterns to tell advertisers, "Take a hike!"
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday February 12 2019, @04:20AM
I think if you reliably carry your phone with you everywhere then yes, they could calculate a probability that you will stop at the store on any given day, have a fairly accurate time window of when you would do it, and how long it would take. If they have access to your credit card transaction history and/or your "shopper card" for the supermarket, then they could make fairly accurate probability predictions on what you would buy and how much.
Moreover, they could slot you into a lifestyle category, predict what you would most likely be interested in, generally speaking, 5 years from now, make a fairly accurate guess if you had a life partner and what sex they are, assign you a "sociability score" based on your movement and activities, and predict most of your major life events as probabilities.