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Today Times Opinion published the first story in One Nation, Tracked: an investigation into the smartphone tracking industry. We think it might change the way you look at your phone.
The series, which is part of our larger Privacy Project, is the result of a trove of data obtained by Times Opinion. It holds more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans, across several major cities. The data was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so. The sources of the information said they had grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers. You can read it here. And we’ll continue publishing stories based on our findings throughout the weekend.
In the months we’ve spent poring over this location data, speaking with people we were able to identify and reporting on the industry, one thing has become crystal clear: This is the decade we were brainwashed into surveilling ourselves.
Just over 10 years ago, Apple unveiled its App store. Since then, we’ve downloaded hundreds of billions of apps. They help us navigate cities, tell us the weather, teach us new languages and keep us connected. In return, these companies ask us for something precious: our personal information, including our every movement via location tracking. This isn’t some aberration, this is how our technology and advertising platforms were designed.
Think about it this way: Americans would be furious if the government required that every person must carry a tracking device that broadcast their location dozens of times each day, forever.
And yet Americans have, with every terms of service agreement they click “agree” on, consented to just such a system run by private companies. Tens of millions of Americans, including many children, are now carrying spies in their pockets. They go everywhere. To work, to the gym and then on their bedside tables. All in the service of better personalized alerts, turn-by-turn directions and more persuasive targeted advertising.
In recent months, we’ve spoken with people we’ve found in the data. Their reaction is surprising — a blend of contradictory emotions like outrage and apathy. It seems we don’t quite have the language to talk about this kind of surveillance. We hope seeing the scale and granularity of this information will help us all start to develop a working vocabulary for the world we now inhabit.
As we begin to wrap up our reporting on this tracking series and take stock of what we uncovered, it remains striking how quickly the world has changed. The location tracking industry didn’t really exist until the end of the 2000s. Powerful location-based apps became ubiquitous in the blink of an eye. As the decade closes, we’re inundated with stories of privacy invasions, from data breaches to smart speakers to hackable doorbell cameras and now to location-gobbling apps. It feels like a defining theme of the 2010s. We were sold a future of personalization and convenience and paid for it with little pieces of ourselves that we can never get back.
[If you’re online — and, well, you are — someone’s using your information. We’ll tell you what you can do about it. Sign up for the Privacy Project newsletter here.]
Tip of the Week: Our Guide to Protecting Yourself
Once your location is shared with companies, there’s no way to delete that information or get it back. Your best bet is to avoid sharing your location in the first place — at least until the government begins regulating how that information is collected, used and sold. So we compiled a three-step guide to protecting your phone (for both Android and iPhone).
Tips?
Work in the location tracking industry? Seen an abuse of data? We want to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, contact us on a secure line at 440-295-5934, @charliewarzel on Wire or email Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson directly.
Like other media companies, The Times collects data on its visitors when they read stories like this one. For more detail please see our privacy policy and our publisher’s description of The Times’s practices and continued steps to increase transparency and protections.
Follow @privacyproject on Twitter and The New York Times Opinion Section on Facebook and Instagram.
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December 20, 2019 at 02:31AM
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Twelve Million Americans Were Tracked Through Their Phones - The New York Times
"phone" - Google News
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