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

[nir]

Dozens of companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds. They say it’s anonymous, but the data shows how personal it is.

The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user.

One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark to a nearby Planned Parenthood, remaining there for more than an hour. Another represents a person who travels with the mayor of New York during the day and returns to Long Island at night.

Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, a 46-year-old math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her.

An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than a million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Ms. Magrin’s identity was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot.

The app tracked her as she went to a Weight Watchers meeting and to her dermatologist’s office for a minor procedure. It followed her hiking with her dog and staying at her ex-boyfriend’s home, information she found disturbing.

“It’s the thought of people finding out those intimate details that you don’t want people to know,” said Ms. Magrin, who allowed The Times to review her location data.

Like many consumers, Ms. Magrin knew that apps could track people’s movements. But as smartphones have become ubiquitous and technology more accurate, an industry of snooping on people’s daily habits has spread and grown more intrusive....

Read the full article with super graphics at the source.

Source

[Matrix]

Report shows just how much of your location data apps are sharing

Remember to check your apps' location-data permissions

 

 

 

 

In brief: Enabling location services for your smartphone apps can bring benefits, but a new report shows just how much it’ll cost you in terms of privacy. According to the New York Times, at least 75 companies dedicate to receive anonymous but very precise location data from about 200 million US mobile devices. It reveals people’s travels accurate to within a few years, and in some cases, the information is updated over 14,000 times per day.

While location data is anonymous and not tied to names or phone numbers, the NYT found that users’ daily patterns, such as where they sleep and places they visit, could be used to figure out their identity.

The Times tested 20 popular apps and found that 17 of them sent precise location data to about 70 businesses. One popular application, WeatherBug (on iOS), sent it to 40 companies. Out of these 17 apps, just three on iOS and one on Android notified users during the permissions process that their data could be used for advertising, while only one indicated it could be shared to “analyze industry trends.”

“These companies sell, use or analyze the data to cater to advertisers, retail outlets and even hedge funds seeking insights into consumer behavior,” writes the publication.

Some of the apps tested by the NYT include the Weather Channel, theScore, GasBuddy, DC Metro and Bus, Tube Map - London Underground, Perfect365, SnipSnap Coupon App, and Masha and the Bear: Free Animal Games for Kids.

The report arrives at a time when privacy has become one of the biggest issues for consumers. With Facebook and Google already under scrutiny for their use of customers’ data, reports such as this one could increase support for GDPR-style data protection regulations in the US.

 

Original Article.