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