If you’re a fan of cop shows and the like, you undoubtedly know that the police can ask your mobile carrier for a record of your location information. Mostly, they’re supposed to get a warrant but often the phone companies will hand over the information without one. Regardless, this is something most of us know and accept as normal law enforcement activity.
It turns out, though, that the carriers have been selling your location information to “data aggregators” who in turn sell it to anyone willing to pay. They’re getting the information from cell towers so it doesn’t matter what phone you’re using or what apps you use. The article at the link provides an example of how the reporter was able to pay a bounty hunter $300 and get the location of a random phone. The carriers for their part swear they only sell it to “legitimate” users and reselling it to those not entitled to it is strictly against their policies. The truth is that everyone in the industry knows this is going on but they don’t care because it provides a revenue stream.
Except that after the Motherboard article the carriers are falling all over themselves to clean up their act before the regulators get involved. Already AT&T is promising to stop selling the data to anyone and the other carriers are jumping on the same bandwagon. We here at Irreal have a deep and abiding cynicism about almost all government action and would be normally be the last to suggest they get involved but, really, the carriers are out of control and this needs to be made illegal. Otherwise as soon as the outrage dies down, the carriers will be right back to selling our information.