T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T Are Selling Customers' Real-Time Location Data, And It's Falling Into the Wrong Hands

It is obvious that the telecommunications companies know your location when you have a mobile phone, but there is some trust that that data isn't being used for other purposes. We shouldn't trust.

Microbilt buys access to location data from an aggregator called Zumigo and then sells it to a dizzying number of sectors, including landlords to scope out potential renters; motor vehicle salesmen, and others who are conducting credit checks. Armed with just a phone number, Microbilt’s “Mobile Device Verify” product can return a target’s full name and address, geolocate a phone in an individual instance, or operate as a continuous tracking service.

This is a crisis of ethics. How is it justifiable to track your location and sell it to other commercial entities when there is no expectation that that is occurring. This has the additional issue that there is no way for the user to even know that it is or is not happening since it’s on the providers end.