![]() WOODS: One high-profile example from last year involved a Catholic priest. GHAMRAWI: So it's not all nefarious and bad, but unfortunately, the way that it's been used today has exploited individuals because this information is really sensitive. Think of navigation and mapping apps or ride-sharing apps like Lyft and Uber. WONG: And then there are apps that simply wouldn't work without knowing their users' locations. ![]() Like, say, an epidemiologist wants to track the spread of infectious diseases in a population, or a real estate company might want to analyze foot traffic patterns when deciding where to open a store. WOODS: Lena says location data can be helpful. The apps then turn around and sell that information to data brokers, third parties who then package that data, repurpose it and then sell it to anyone that wants to buy the data. GHAMRAWI: Usually what happens is that apps are collecting information about you. military was buying location data collected from a variety of apps. Like in 2020, Vice reported that the U.S. This was also when more investigative journalism was coming out about the industry. A couple of years ago, she helped launch a watchdog group that investigated mobile apps. Like, you are in your living room in your apartment. LENA GHAMRAWI: Precise geolocation data is really your longitude and latitude, so exactly where you are. WONG: Our phones contain a treasure trove of information about us - what we're watching, buying, searching for and where we are. And we're going to talk to one developer about his experience to try to build a weather app that takes privacy seriously. Today on the show, we're going to look at mobile location data, how it's gathered, sold and used. It is a multibillion-dollar industry where information on people's precise whereabouts is still being collected from mobile apps and sold to companies or government agencies, often without users' knowledge or direct consent. Since then, the market for location data has continued to flourish. And this landed the company in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission. It was recording users' locations and sending that information to advertisers. So this app would turn on all the available lights, essentially making the phone into a flashlight.īut the brightest flashlight was also doing something else. This was during the time when a lot of Android phones didn't have built-in flashlights like the iPhone. The brightest flashlight app was developed for something very simple. (SOUNDBITE OF DROP ELECTRIC SONG, "WAKING UP TO THE FIRE")
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