Will Oremus, from Slate Magazine, wrote a very smart and objective piece on how every major cell phone carrier is tracking your whereabouts and selling that data to third parties. And yes, it gets worse.
The story involves the real-time location-tracking data that the four largest U.S. wireless carriers collect on everyone with a mobile device. Basically, they know roughly where you are at all times, even if you don’t have your GPS turned on, based on the regular interactions between your phone and nearby cell towers. The carriers aren’t supposed to share that information without your consent. But the
New York Times reported earlier this month that a company called Securus Technologies was offering a service that allowed users to track people’s whereabouts in real time, using data obtained from the wireless companies through a pair of intermediaries.
So how is this actually happening? Securus is procuring all that location data of mobile-phone users across the country from one key intermediary was a firm called LocationSmart. Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile are all sending their users location data to LocationSmart without you knowing about it or “opting-in.”
It gets worse. A Carnegie Mellon researcher poking around on LocationSmart’s website found that he could use a free trial service to instantly pinpoint the location of, well, just about anyone with a mobile phone and wireless service from one of those major carriers. He did this without any permission or credentials, let alone a warrant.
So there you have it…just when you thought it was safe to show off your latest meal on Facebook, you find you can be tracked by dodgy technology companies. The real question then becomes: does anyone care?
Read: The Privacy Scandal That Should Be Bigger Than Cambridge Analytica
