AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile selling customers' real-time locations: report [telecom]

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Data ends up in hands of property managers, bail agents, 'bounty hunters,' report says.

By Ethan Baron

If like most people you keep your cell phone handy, your mobile- service provider knows where you are nearly all the time. And several major cell companies are selling that information to firms that sell it onward in a practice that could let stalkers and criminals find out your location in real time, according to a new report.

"A wide variety of companies can access cell phone location data, and ... the information trickles down from cell phone providers to a wide array of smaller players, who don't necessarily have the correct safeguards in place to protect that data," Motherboard reported Jan. 8.