Location Tracking Running Amok

Dom DiFurio, writing for The Dallas Morning News:

Analysis from Fort Worth-based Buxton Live Mobile Insights sheds light on where Chick-Fil-A customers go on Sunday when the restaurant is closed. The company tracked location data from the mobile devices of customers on Chick-fil-A properties Monday through Saturday, and then studied where those same customers ate on Sundays.

Buxton told The Dallas Morning News it “purchases and analyzes consumer location data from multiple data aggregators where the data is collected from mobile devices which have pre-opted in to location services tracking.”

The story is ostensibly about fried chicken, but the fact that a marketing firm is tracking people like this is so fucked up. Whatever these people opted into, I’ll bet most of them have no idea how closely they’re being tracked. This is dystopian.

★ Monday, 26 August 2019