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

Posted on May 14, 2018June 25, 2025 by Dissent

Zack Whittaker reports:

Four of the largest cell giants in the US are selling your real-time location data to a company that you’ve probably never heard about before.

In case you missed it, a senator last week sent a letter demanding the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigate why Securus, a prison technology company, can track any phone “within seconds” by using data obtained from the country’s largest cell giants, including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, through an intermediary, LocationSmart.

[…]

LocationSmart, a California-based technology company, is one of a handful of so-called data aggregators. It claimed to have “direct connections” to cell carrier networks to obtain real-time cell phone location data from nearby cell towers. It’s less accurate than using GPS, but cell tower data won’t drain a phone battery and doesn’t require a user to install an app. Verizon, one of many cell carriers that sells access to its vast amounts of customer location data, counts LocationSmart as a close partner.

Read more on ZDNet.

Related posts:

  • The Popular Family Safety App Life360 Is Selling Precise Location Data on Its Tens of Millions of Users
  • How the Federal Government Buys Our Cell Phone Location Data
Category: BusinessGovtSurveillance

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