Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
European journalists have found that it is “easy” to spy on top EU officials using commercially obtained location histories sold by data brokers, despite the continent having some of the world’s strongest data protection laws.
EU officials have said they are “concerned” about the trade in mobile phone location data of citizens and officials and have issued new guidelines to staff to combat tracking, according to a report. Network politics.
A Union of Journalists The dataset provided as a free sample was obtained from a data broker containing 278 million location data points from the phones of millions of people around Belgium. Most location data is uploaded by simple apps installed on a person’s phone, which are sold to data brokers. Those data brokers then sell that data to the government and the military.
The dataset also included granular location histories of top European officials, including those who work directly for the European Commission, headquartered in Brussels.
The journalists said they were able to identify hundreds of devices operating in sensitive areas around the European Union, including 2,000 location markers from 264 officials’ devices and around 5,800 location markers from more than 750 devices in the European Parliament.
Europe has some of the strongest data protection rules in the world, including GDPR laws. However, watchdogs and officials across Europe have been slow to take strong enforcement action against data brokers, Netpolitik reported. Data brokering has become a billion-dollar industry that involves selling and trading people’s location data and other personal information.
To prevent some tracking of this location, Apple customers Their device identifiers can be anonymized, and Android owners can do so regularly Reset their device identifier.
Last year a data broker called Gravy Analytics was one Data breach which exposed the location data of millions of people, where they were, live and work. Examining the data, researchers say location records can be widely used to track people’s recent locations.
