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.”

  • merde alors
    35•6 months ago

    how to talk about this with the “I’ve got nothing to hide” crowd 🤷

    • KarnaOPEnglish
      36•6 months ago

      This is how I explained it to one of my friends who is/was definitely a member of “I’ve got nothing to hide” club -

      • Suppose you are in a pay-to-use toilet minding your own Business.
      • That pay-to-use toilet is managed by a public/private entity called ToiletBook.
      • Suddenly you notice a (hidden) camera in the room.
      • When confronted, the owner confirms the only reason they took your picture to suggest you the perfect underwear based on your size. And, there is a legal guarantee that picture/data will never be used for any other purpose and only be processed by machine.
      • Will you still go to such toilet?

      BTW, that friend stopped talking to me afterward; not sure why 🤔 (Edit: I should stop giving shitty examples to anyone, as it seems ) 🤐

    • @Murdoc
      15•6 months ago

      I’ve heard others suggest something like “then you won’t mind giving me your SSN/SIN, bank account details and PIN, all your e-mail and computer passwords…” and whatever else you can think of, and if they are still ok with that, then add “and I’ll post them on the internet.” I don’t know how well it works though as I haven’t had the chance to try it.
      People who say this are assuming benign, rational actors, but there are plenty of predatory and irrational ones that will misuse your data. So a list of examples, general and specific, may help there.
      Hmm, could we as a community compile such a list for people to use as a kit (assuming it hasn’t been done already)? Then when people get the opportunity to use it, they could provide feedback that can be used to improve the kit. E.g., which examples work best, which don’t, presentation methods, etc. Does this sound like something people would want, and/or want to contribute to? I know that I’d find it handy.