Your Cell Phone Location Data Sold to the Highest Bidder

Wireless carriers routinely sell your real-time location data to third parties - and there's not much you can do to stop it.More:http://richontech.tv/2018/05/rich-on-tech-podcast/wireless-carriers-sell-location-data/Follow Rich on Social Media:Facebook: http://facebook.com/RichOnTechTwitter: http://twitter.com/richdemuroInstagram: http://instagram.com/richontechEasy ways to listen on your phone or smart speaker:"Hey Google, Play the Rich on Tech Podcast""Hey Siri, Play the Rich on Tech Podcast""Alexa, Enable the Rich on Tech Flash Briefing"

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Get full access to Rich on Tech at richontech.tv/subscribe

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Your cell phone location in seconds. What's going on? I'm
rich Demiro, this is rich on Tech Daily. Well, we
know our cell phones have GPS inside, but just how
easy is it for someone to tap into that information? Well,
it took a random website all of two point seven
seconds to pinpoint pretty much exactly where my phone was.
Let me explain. This all started with the New York

(00:26):
Times article about a service called securis. This is meant
to track inmates locations, but it turns out the service
can be used to track anyone. The article was about
an officer who used the service to basically bypass search
warrants to find where people were anyway, but it puts
some light on a bigger topic. All four of the
big cell phone companies, including AT and T, T Mobile, Sprint,

(00:47):
and Verizon are selling customers real time location data to
third party companies. Let me explain. One of those companies
is Carlsbad based Location Smart. Now, they're not doing anything wrong,
but here's how they work. They operate a service that's
mainly meant for marketers, and it can pretty much pinpoint
the location of any cell phone in America in seconds.

(01:07):
And you can see how fast it works. They even
have a section of their website where you can try
out a demo. It's at LocationSmart dot com slash try
and I have a feeling this might not be up
for much longer as more people learn about this. But
all I did was pop in my cell phone number
and replied yes to a confirmation text, and then almost instantly,
a map of my phone's location showed up on screen

(01:31):
in what they said was two point seven seconds. Yeah,
that's also listed on the screen. There was also my
latitude and longitude accuracy information, so for mine it was
to nine hundred and six feet, which is pretty darn close.
They also had the name of my wireless carrier and
the businesses nearby. Now the businesses nearby is important because
this service is meant as a way to track people,

(01:53):
not for nefarious reasons, but for marketers to see where
people went with their phones. But you can imagine this
can be used in various way ways. Now the website
zd net talk to someone from the New America Open
Technology Institute and they explain what's going on here. Wireless
carriers can't hand over our real time data directly to
the government, but there's nothing stopping them from acquiring this

(02:15):
data from third party companies that sell it. So back
to that website, you might be thinking, well, rich, didn't
you say yes to a text message that asked for
your consent? I did. But there are other ways you
can consent to giving up your location data as well,
and Location smart says it can release your data based
on one time, persistent or what they call implied consent.

(02:35):
And again they're not doing anything wrong, but you can
see how it's kind of odd that our information is
so out there. In fact, a service like theirs can
be quite useful if you're a stranded motorist and you
want your roadside assistance app to be able to pinpoint
you in those same two point seven seconds. That's really
what this service is aimed at. But again, it's just
one more way we're sort of all in the dark

(02:57):
about this highly personal data about us being sold to
the highest bidder, and the fact that it's the wireless
companies doing this makes it even scarier. It's one more
reason to be weary about any apps or services that
ask for access to your location unless it's specifically necessary,
like a maps app. At the end of the day,
many of us, myself included. Find it a bit surprising

(03:18):
that while we pay our wireless carriers for our service,
they go around and sell our most private data in
a pretty big way. All right, If you want to
link to this website, you can go to mine. Just
go to richon tech dot tv and as always, thanks
so much for listening. If you could, I'd love a
rating and review in the Apple Podcasts app. If you
enjoy listening to the rich on Tech Daily podcast, I'm

(03:40):
Rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.