{"id":647,"date":"2021-10-06T07:12:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T07:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/?p=647"},"modified":"2021-10-10T22:18:47","modified_gmt":"2021-10-10T22:18:47","slug":"location-data-new-multi-billion-dollar-industry-phone-location-history-bought-and-sold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/location-data-new-multi-billion-dollar-industry-phone-location-history-bought-and-sold\/","title":{"rendered":"New 12-billion dollar industry: phone location data – “1.6 billion people across 44 countries, 1.9 billion devices”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(quote)

\n\nYour Phone’s Location Data Is Worth $12 Billion<\/a>
\nInterconnected firms are monetizing user data and analytics from ‘1.9 billion devices’.

\n\nWherever you go, you might make money.
\nBut for someone else.
\nSome companies that shy away from the spotlight are paying top dollar for privileged access to the location history stored on your mobile phone, according to an initial report from The Next Web.

\n\nAnd it’s a growing industry worth an estimated $12 billion, involving aggregators, collectors, marketplaces, and location intelligence firms…an interconnected, collaborative group of companies that offer code to app developers, monetize user data, and sell analytics from “1.9 billion devices”, enabling access to datasets from hundreds of millions of people. Just six of these companies hold data from more than 1 billion devices, and at least four other firms say their data is the “most accurate” in the industry.

\n\nThis is a new multi-billion dollar industry: phone location data is bought and sold<\/a>
\nAs thenextweb writes, in recent years, a huge but little-known industry has emerged that collects and sells location data for mobile devices.

\n\nCompanies you\u2019ve probably never heard of offer access to your smartphone\u2019s location history. The $ 12 billion location data industry has a multitude of players \u2014 collectors, aggregators, marketplaces, and location intelligence firms \u2014 all bragging about the scale and accuracy of the data they collect.

\n\nThe Markup has identified 47 companies that collect or trade cell phone location data. Six companies said they had more than a billion devices in their data, and at least four said their data was the \u201cmost accurate\u201d in the industry.

\n\nFor example, geolocation firm Near calls itself \u201cthe world\u2019s largest aggregator of real-world human behavior data,\u201d with data representing \u201c1.6 billion people in 44 countries.\u201d Mobilewalla offers 5 years of data that covers over 40 countries and nearly 2 billion mobile devices. X-Mode claims its data covers \u201c25% + US adults per month.\u201d

\n\nNotably, Oracle has a partner that openly advertises data on millions of people in the United States. This includes demographic information such as personal activities and life preferences. Meanwhile, Oracle, Epsilon and others are also explicitly promoting data exchange platforms to thousands of companies.

\n\nA huge but little-known industry has cropped up around monetizing people\u2019s movements<\/a>
\nThe truth is, it\u2019s hard to know all the ways in which your movements are being tracked and traded. Companies often reveal little about what apps serve as the sources of data they collect, what exactly that data consists of, and how far it travels. To piece together a picture of the ecosystem, The Markup reviewed the websites and marketing language of each of the 47 companies we identified as operating in the location data industry, as well as any information they revealed about how the data got to them.

\n\n\u201cWhen the app asks for location, in the moment, because maybe you click the button to find stuff near you and you get a permission dialog, you might reasonably infer that \u2018Oh, that\u2019s to service that request to provide that functionality,\u2019 but there\u2019s no guarantee of that,\u201d Egelman said. \u201cAnd there\u2019s certainly usually never a disclosure that says that the data is going to be limited to that purpose.\u201d

\n\n(unquote)

\n\nImage courtesy GadgetTendency<\/a> and TNW<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(quote) Your Phone’s Location Data Is Worth $12 Billion Interconnected firms are monetizing user data and analytics from ‘1.9 billion devices’. Wherever you go, you might make money. But for someone else. Some companies that shy away from the spotlight are paying top dollar for privileged access to the locationRead More →<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,11,12],"tags":[21,22,26,27,59,40,24,58,35,41,32],"class_list":["entry","author-wcp-watchful-eye","post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-figures-and-facts","category-life-nature-society","category-science-and-technology","category-us-and-world","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-facts","tag-figures","tag-health","tag-internet","tag-law","tag-lifestyle","tag-news","tag-society","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}