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random6547545on US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

I'm focused on GPS data which is a free for all. Sure, cell towers have location too just not quite as accurate.

random6547545on US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

Hopefully this shows people how deep it is.

random6547545on US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

It's android for the hardware manufacturers and OS crapware getting location data.

For iOS, assume every app using your location is selling the data. That means every app using a map or location smoothing SDK (GPS jumps around, there are services to smooth it out), since the map SDK providers (and there's not many) are selling your data even if the app itself isn't.

Google, Apple, Microsoft etc are pretty careful for good reason. Anyone below that is probably selling it.

random6547545on US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

Yes. But switching off location will probably do it too.

random6547545on US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

Throwaway account.

I work in location / mapping / geo. Some of us have been waiting for this to blow (which it hasn't yet). The public has zero idea how much personal location data is available.

It's not just your cell carrier. Your cell phone chip manufacturer, GPS chip manufacturer, phone manufacturer and then pretty much anyone on the installed OS (android crapware) is getting a copy of your location data. Usually not in software but by contract, one gives gps data to all the others as part of the bill of materials.

This is then usually (but not always) "anonymized" by cutting it in to ~5 second chunks. It's easy to put it back together again. We can figure out everything about your day from when you wake up to where you go to when you sleep.

This data is sold to whoever wants it. Hedge funds or services who analyze it for hedge funds is the big one. It's normal to track hundreds of millions of people a day and trade stocks based on where they go. This isn't fantasy, it's what happens every day.

Almost every web/smartphone mapping company is doing it, so is almost everyone that tracks you for some service - "turn the lights on when I get home". The web mapping companies and those that provide SDKs for "free". It's a monetization model for apps which don't need location. That's why Apple is trying hard to restrict it without scaring off consumers.