A huge but little-known industry has cropped up around monetizing people’s movements

Location firm Near describes itself as “The World’s Largest Dataset of People’s Behavior in the Real-World,” with data representing “1.6B people across 44 countries.” Mobilewalla boasts “40+ Countries, 1.9B+ Devices, 50B Mobile Signals Daily, 5+ Years of Data.” X-Mode’s website claims its data covers “25%+ of the Adult U.S. population monthly.”

Fast food restaurants and other businesses have been known to buy location data for advertising purposes down to a person’s steps. For example, in 2018, Burger King ran a promotion in which, if a customer’s phone was within 600 feet of a McDonalds, the Burger King app would let the user buy a Whopper for one cent.

Outlogic (formerly known as X-Mode) offers a license for a location dataset titled “Cyber Security Location data” on Datarade for $240,000 per year. The listing says “Outlogic’s accurate and granular location data is collected directly from a mobile device’s GPS.”

  • Rayspekt@kbin.social
    14·
    10 months ago

    I might know the answer beforehand, but still: Does it change anything regarding data collection if I turn off my location on android in the top menu?

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
      11·
      10 months ago

      Carrier probably collect and sell your location radio direction and range telemetry from towers. Especially with 5G, high antenna diversity and beam forming automatic gain control can probably locate you better than 10 meters at all times.

      What I want to know is, how can I buy this data for people I don’t like ?

        • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
          2·
          10 months ago

          Yes, 3 towers just need to know how strong your signal is, the intersection of 3 circle is where you are.

          But for a long time, antenna towers have multiple antenna, so each tower know your azimuth and distance on its own.

          There is no escape. This is why ham radio was kneecapped too.