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Your phone company is (probably) selling your locations data. Here's how to turn it off [telecom]

Your Phone's Location Access Reveals a Lot. Here's How to Turn It Off.

By Thorin Klosowski - JUNE 29, 2022

Your phone is likely selling your location information to the highest bidder. But there are steps you can take to help prevent that.

The issue has been raised in Congress in recent weeks. In mid-June, a group of Democratic senators introduced legislation, called the Health and Location Data Protection Act, that seeks to ban data brokers from sharing the location and health data they collect. Although banning the sharing of health data seems pretty self-explanatory--and it's frankly shocking to learn that there are no protections against its sale already--location-data collection has long been an issue that has flown under many people's radar.

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Reply to
Bill Horne
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Not necessarily. While the phone company does know where you are, at least down to the which-cell level. the phone itself has GPS (required for E911 location purposes, though you sometimes wonder if the people behind such rules had other interests in mind), and apps can be given permission to access it. Then the app itself can communicate with its servers. The carrier has nothing to do with it. You can, however, go into the app permissions settings in Android and see which apps have Location permission, and when (all the time, or only when using it, for instance).

The Wirecutter article is behind a paywall. You get one or two free articles a month; being a Times subscriber doesn't cut it either. (The NY Times also charges extra for its recipes page.)

Reply to
Fred Goldstein

Sorry, I don't buy it. The Olympians heights of the phone company PR flacks probably resound with oh-so-comforting denials, but I think they're lying through their teeth.

Do they know which app is keeping track of who visits the abortion clinic? I don't know - but they chose the phones they sell, and they chose to allow apps to install with location access on by default, and they chose to take a cut of the app revenue. They profit from every single app, and that makes them culpable.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Horne

I'm not saying that the phone company isn't collecting your position data. But read what Fred is saying.... by default any app running on your phone has access to your position data. It's not JUST the phone company. It's any company whose apps you are using. A whole raft of companies have access to your data and they ALL are likely to be collecting it.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

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