The New York Times just dropped a bombshell and everyone currently holding a cell phone should be alarmed. Right now, billions of real-time location data points (on virtually everyone with a mobile device) are being tracked, unsafely stored, then sold and resold by big corporations.1
What’s worse: all this real-time location tracking is an unregulated million-dollar shadow industry. We need to take control of our privacy. Now.
Tell Congress: Act now and ban the sale and resale of real-time location data tracking.
Using real-time location tracking data, companies are able to find out where you live, when you go to sleep, where you work, where you pray, if you’ve attended a protest. In a shocking example, the New York Times was even able to use location-tracking data to reveal an Amazon tech executive was covertly interviewing for another job.
You’ve heard of Big Brother, well this is Tiny Brother. And Tiny Brother is (almost certainly) watching your movements.
Tell Congress: Act now and ban the sale and resale of real-time location data tracking.
The New York Times op-ed reveals that hidden companies behind commonly used apps are tracking, selling, and reselling our individual real-time movements in order to better target advertisements to us. But that kind of seamless advertising comes at a dangerous cost.
Our everyday movements, to work or school or frankly wherever, represent intimate and exceptionally private information about us. Do the apps on your phone need to know when you see your therapist, if you’re thinking about leaving your current job, how many political protest rallies you’ve attended, or even who you may or may not be romantically involved in?
Absolutely not, but this is precisely the kind of information that can be easily gleaned by tracking our moment-to-moment movements throughout the day.
Since this location tracking industry is largely unregulated, our most private data -- our actual physical movements throughout the day -- are vulnerable to hackers, data breaches, and potentially even hostile foreign governments.
The risks are shocking, and Congress needs to do something about this immediately.
Tell Congress: Act now and ban the sale and resale of real-time location data tracking.