Technology Education Blog

In an in-depth report on geo-location data
collection , The New York Times claims that
apps are misleading their users when asking
for access to their location, companies are
using the data with essentially no oversight,
and that the vast majority of users have no
idea how their data is being used.
The report comes after a recent scandal
involving Google allegedly misleading users
about how to 'turn off' their apps' geo-
location features, which culminated in formal
complaints by privacy organizations in seven
different European countries . It also comes in
the wake of a highly publicized hearing before
Congress in which representatives revealed
how little they understand about Google .
In the report, the authors combed through
patterns of data collected from 1.2 million
unique devices in the New York area and
followed up with the companies who were
collecting and selling that data. One of the
more troubling takeaways was that the
supposedly anonymous location data can be
attached to a person's identity relatively
easily: "...those with access to the raw data
- including employees or clients - could still
identify a person without consent. They could
follow someone they knew, by pinpointing a
phone that regularly spent time at that
person's home address. Or, working in
reverse, they could attach a name to an
anonymous dot, by seeing where the device
spent nights and using public records to
figure out who lived there."
Much of this data doesn't stay in the apps
that collect it—it's sold to advertisers,
other businesses, or (oftentimes) anyone else
the app chooses. There is little to no
regulation for how user data can be treated,
and the agreements users make to share
their data usually don't tell the whole story
—according to the Times: "...the explanations
people see when prompted to give permission
are often incomplete or misleading. An app
may tell users that granting access to their
location will help them get traffic
information, but not mention that the data
will be shared and sold. That disclosure is
often buried in a vague privacy policy."
In a statement, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon
said "Location information can reveal some of
the most intimate details of a person's life -
whether you've visited a psychiatrist,
whether you went to an A.A. meeting, who
you might date. It's not right to have
consumers kept in the dark about how their
data is sold and shared and then leave them
unable to do anything about it."