A shocking new investigation reveals that companies can track you constantly, with your phone constantly broadcasting your exact location at all times.
The New York Times published the investigation on Thursday, using a leaked dataset from one of the many location data companies that collect data from your favorite mobile apps, and the results are unsettling. The investigation, part of the Times Privacy Project series, looked at data of more than 50 billion location “pings” from the phones of more than 12 million Americans from 2016-2017.
“You’ve probably never heard of most of the companies — and yet to anyone who has access to this data, your life is an open book. They can see the places you go every moment of the day, whom you meet with or spend the night with, where you pray, whether you visit a methadone clinic, a psychiatrist’s office or a massage parlor,” the article reads.