Speaker 1: Your cell phone location in seconds. What's going on? I'm
Speaker 1: rich Demiro, this is rich on Tech Daily. Well, we
Speaker 1: know our cell phones have GPS inside, but just how
Speaker 1: easy is it for someone to tap into that information? Well,
Speaker 1: it took a random website all of two point seven
Speaker 1: seconds to pinpoint pretty much exactly where my phone was.
Speaker 1: Let me explain. This all started with the New York
Speaker 1: Times article about a service called securis. This is meant
Speaker 1: to track inmates locations, but it turns out the service
Speaker 1: can be used to track anyone. The article was about
Speaker 1: an officer who used the service to basically bypass search
Speaker 1: warrants to find where people were anyway, but it puts
Speaker 1: some light on a bigger topic. All four of the
Speaker 1: big cell phone companies, including AT and T, T Mobile, Sprint,
Speaker 1: and Verizon are selling customers real time location data to
Speaker 1: third party companies. Let me explain. One of those companies
Speaker 1: is Carlsbad based Location Smart. Now, they're not doing anything wrong,
Speaker 1: but here's how they work. They operate a service that's
Speaker 1: mainly meant for marketers, and it can pretty much pinpoint
Speaker 1: the location of any cell phone in America in seconds.
Speaker 1: And you can see how fast it works. They even
Speaker 1: have a section of their website where you can try
Speaker 1: out a demo. It's at LocationSmart dot com slash try
Speaker 1: and I have a feeling this might not be up
Speaker 1: for much longer as more people learn about this. But
Speaker 1: all I did was pop in my cell phone number
Speaker 1: and replied yes to a confirmation text, and then almost instantly,
Speaker 1: a map of my phone's location showed up on screen
Speaker 1: in what they said was two point seven seconds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's also listed on the screen. There was also my
Speaker 1: latitude and longitude accuracy information, so for mine it was
Speaker 1: to nine hundred and six feet, which is pretty darn close.
Speaker 1: They also had the name of my wireless carrier and
Speaker 1: the businesses nearby. Now the businesses nearby is important because
Speaker 1: this service is meant as a way to track people,
Speaker 1: not for nefarious reasons, but for marketers to see where
Speaker 1: people went with their phones. But you can imagine this
Speaker 1: can be used in various way ways. Now the website
Speaker 1: zd net talk to someone from the New America Open
Speaker 1: Technology Institute and they explain what's going on here. Wireless
Speaker 1: carriers can't hand over our real time data directly to
Speaker 1: the government, but there's nothing stopping them from acquiring this
Speaker 1: data from third party companies that sell it. So back
Speaker 1: to that website, you might be thinking, well, rich, didn't
Speaker 1: you say yes to a text message that asked for
Speaker 1: your consent? I did. But there are other ways you
Speaker 1: can consent to giving up your location data as well,
Speaker 1: and Location smart says it can release your data based
Speaker 1: on one time, persistent or what they call implied consent.
Speaker 1: And again they're not doing anything wrong, but you can
Speaker 1: see how it's kind of odd that our information is
Speaker 1: so out there. In fact, a service like theirs can
Speaker 1: be quite useful if you're a stranded motorist and you
Speaker 1: want your roadside assistance app to be able to pinpoint
Speaker 1: you in those same two point seven seconds. That's really
Speaker 1: what this service is aimed at. But again, it's just
Speaker 1: one more way we're sort of all in the dark
Speaker 1: about this highly personal data about us being sold to
Speaker 1: the highest bidder, and the fact that it's the wireless
Speaker 1: companies doing this makes it even scarier. It's one more
Speaker 1: reason to be weary about any apps or services that
Speaker 1: ask for access to your location unless it's specifically necessary,
Speaker 1: like a maps app. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: many of us, myself included. Find it a bit surprising
Speaker 1: that while we pay our wireless carriers for our service,
Speaker 1: they go around and sell our most private data in
Speaker 1: a pretty big way. All right, If you want to
Speaker 1: link to this website, you can go to mine. Just
Speaker 1: go to richon tech dot tv and as always, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. If you could, I'd love a
Speaker 1: rating and review in the Apple Podcasts app. If you
Speaker 1: enjoy listening to the rich on Tech Daily podcast, I'm
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.