It is so trivially easy to decipher a person's life from their location data, especially with some simple ML.
The fact that it's so easy ensures in my mind that it's only a matter of time before this data falls into the hands of a true authoritarian administration.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23138828
Basically, cell service providers collect as much data as possible and share it with as many third parties as possible. They keep track of your internet traffic, and they can keep track of your location based upon signal strength.
This is just one of the sources they get their data from, but there’s no way to stop it, short of removing your SIM card.
An easy one is to provide a mobile hotspot with the name `attwifi` with no password and just sniff the data. You can derive a lot of data just from the network activity on a phone and since you're on WiFi, you can get approximate WiFi location. A couple of dozen laptops in a couple of buildings and you can also approximate the direction the phones moved as they go from device to device.
FFS, my camera application wants to talk to the internet, sometimes when I'm NOT using it!