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Anomaly Six has implemented a location tracking tool in 500 mobile applications.
A small American company associated with the US military and intelligence community has implemented a tool in hundreds of mobile applications to track the movements of millions of users around the world.
According to The Wall Street Journal, this is a US government contractor, Anomaly Six, which provides "US government units and private clients" with location data for people around the world. According to its marketing materials, Anomaly Six “can obtain location data from over 500 mobile applications” using its own development kit (SDK) embedded directly into the software. However, Anomaly Six representatives told The Wall Street Journal that the company has limited the sale of movement data obtained from smartphones, and now sells them only to private customers.
According to a number of US government organizations, Anomaly Six is legitimate. Data received from phones is anonymized by assigning alphanumeric identifiers to users that are not associated with their names. However, over time, this data may well be associated with a specific person (for example, if he commutes to work on the same path every day).
According to The Wall Street Journal, according to interviews with numerous industry representatives, inadequate regulation of the sale and purchase of location data in the United States has led to what one industry veteran has dubbed the "Wild West." Consumers have become accustomed to free apps, and in order to pay the costs of developing and launching software, manufacturers have begun selling user data, according to sources familiar with the industry.
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A small American company associated with the US military and intelligence community has implemented a tool in hundreds of mobile applications to track the movements of millions of users around the world.
According to The Wall Street Journal, this is a US government contractor, Anomaly Six, which provides "US government units and private clients" with location data for people around the world. According to its marketing materials, Anomaly Six “can obtain location data from over 500 mobile applications” using its own development kit (SDK) embedded directly into the software. However, Anomaly Six representatives told The Wall Street Journal that the company has limited the sale of movement data obtained from smartphones, and now sells them only to private customers.
According to a number of US government organizations, Anomaly Six is legitimate. Data received from phones is anonymized by assigning alphanumeric identifiers to users that are not associated with their names. However, over time, this data may well be associated with a specific person (for example, if he commutes to work on the same path every day).
According to The Wall Street Journal, according to interviews with numerous industry representatives, inadequate regulation of the sale and purchase of location data in the United States has led to what one industry veteran has dubbed the "Wild West." Consumers have become accustomed to free apps, and in order to pay the costs of developing and launching software, manufacturers have begun selling user data, according to sources familiar with the industry.
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