The hidden market for your location data

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Your smartphone is pretty bad at keeping secrets – if it keeps track of your location, someone (or some app) almost definitely knows where you are. Today, the murky market for personal location data.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:12.2	The brightest flashlight app was developed for something very simple.
0:16.6	This was during the time when a lot of Android phones didn't have built-in flashlights
0:20.3	like the iPhone.
0:21.5	So this app would turn on all the available lights, essentially making the phone into a flashlight.
0:27.5	But the brightest flashlight was also doing something else.
0:31.0	It was recording users' locations and sending that information to advertisers.
0:36.1	And this landed the company in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission.
0:40.0	That was almost a decade ago.
0:42.3	Since then, the market for location data has continued to flourish.
0:46.2	It is a multi-billion dollar industry.
0:49.1	Where information on people's precise whereabouts is still being collected from mobile apps,
0:54.2	the sold to companies or government agencies, often without user's knowledge or direct consent.
1:01.6	This is the indicator from Planet Money, I'm Whelan Wong.
1:04.1	And I'm Diane Woods.
1:05.1	Today on the show, we're going to look at mobile location data, how it's gathered,
1:09.2	sold, and used.
1:10.2	And we're going to talk to one developer about his experience to try to build a weather
1:15.4	app that takes privacy seriously.
1:24.6	Support for this podcast comes from NPR sponsor Raymond James, a firm focused on transforming
1:30.2	lives, businesses, and communities through tailored wealth management, banking, and capital
1:35.4	market solutions.
	...

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